The Harrowing
by psykotic addiction
Summary: Across the universe, numerous anime run rampant in their own ignorance and stupidity. Khorne decides he needs to sort this out the only way he knows how. He sends his personal executioner to educate them on the phrase, 'blood bath'.
1. Slaughter of Karakura

(A youtube video of what the Skulltaker sounds like)

.com/watch?v=8xgB5XrIihk&feature=fvwrel

**There will be blood.**

The warp was the epitome of unnaturality.

The warp is chaos. Chaos is the warp. The two were indivisible.

There was one thing that remained constant in the warp though, and it was the presence of the Daemon Gods. The Great Enemy, Infernal Abyss, Madness incarnate, Evil given life, all these names were in some way linked to the 4 beings that ruled over the warp. In simpler to understand terms, everyone simply called them a name that connoted their entire existence.

The chaos gods.

First was Khorne. The Collector of Skulls, Lord of battle, and most commonly known as the Blood God. His realm is the Fortress of Khorne. Across the land, the skulls of all those slain in battle make up the ground that is walked on. Roaring spiked towers, bastions housing countless khornate daemons, vigilantly keep guard of the fortress. To call his fortress impenetrable would be an insult. After all, in a realm where everything is ruled by battle, invaders are practically invited in, to be gloriously slaughtered by horned daemons with flaming, soul rending hellblades. Like him, his daemons revel in bloodshed and battle. The daemons of khorne are unmatched in martial skill and brutal melee. Khorne is labeled the most powerful of the chaos gods at the moment for good reason.

Second is Tzeentch. The changer of ways, the master schemer, and Lord of Change. To describe the realm of Tzeentch is in itself, an assault on the mortal mind. It is an endless and confusing maze that to this day, untold millions are hopelessly trying to navigate through. Horrific mutations infest every square inch of rock and soil. Shapeless horrors of Tzeentch, adept in chaotic magic, maraud across the realm. Daemonic sky sharks scream across the realm, swimming through skies of multi-colored fire. The most powerful psykers and daemons travel here, in attempt to learn and exchange notes with fellow psykers and less volatile of Tzeentchian daemons. Tzeentch is change, and magic is simply another ability to change.

Third is Nurgle. The living plague, Grandfather of blight, and The lord of Decay. The garden of Nurgle is home to every disease, sickness, or contagion known to the galaxy. Poxes, sickness, and despair are as common here, as grass and air is to earth. Nurgle lives to bring about the beauty of disease and his daemons fuel this desire. Plaguebearers of Nurgle count the endless number of diseases Nurgle spends his time to create. As extension they make up the bulk of the plague fathers forces. Nurgle offers immortality and the absence of pain to all his followers. With such abilities, his forces wade through combat, speading death and decay gradually and slowly. War of attrition is the plague god's favorite and only form of warfare. For who can defeat those who cannot truly die?

Fourth and last is Slaanesh, the Goddess of pain, the Prince of Pleasure, and The Lord of Excess. Slaanesh is the youngest of the chaos gods. Khorne and Nurgle are assumably male. Tzeentch is so fickle and ever changing in its appearance that no gender can accurately be placed on it. Slaanesh is neither of these cases. His/Her appearance varies wildly. At one moment, Slaanesh would be the male symbol of masculinity and adoration. The next, she would be an unrivaled beauty of physical perfection and attractive curves. His body shifts in accordance with whoever is in his presence and whatever mood she is in. The Palace of Slaanesh itself is every part temptation. The walls are lined with gold and gems that a single touch will rob you of your soul. Food is cursed so that once one starts eating they will never stop, until their belly bursts. His daemons masquerade as undivine beauties that will rend you apart with their claws at the slightest touch. The very ground is soft enough that to rest on the soil means an eternal coma you will never awake from.

These 4 beings are the chaos gods, and the rulers of the Warp.

Now one may ask "if beings so powerful maraud across a universe beset by war and destruction for untold millennia, what interest could they possibly take in a boring earth? An earth devoid of the imperium of man, space marines, or any beings capable of rivaling their more powerful daemons."

The answer is simple really.

For all the excitement there is to combating the local residents across the 41st millennia, things get old. There's not as much horror or fear associated with the word chaos as there once was. Now, chaos is seen more as an individual faction, simply another player in an ongoing conflict, which will continue for untold millennia. Chaos, by nature, opposes stagnation. At the slightest hint of repetition occurring, something is done to break up the manotomy.

The chaos gods certainly aren't known for liking each other, but it happened to be on this day that Tzeentch felt more blood thirsty than usual and saw several mortals than until now were untouched by his schemes and the hand of chaos entirely. Who better to consult than his older brother, the Blood God? It wasn't a fault of earth that Tzeentch convinced Khorne to send his best daemon herald to their realm. It wasn't a fault of earth that a warp storm was rolling over the planet. It wasn't a fault of earth that many people would die.

They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And now, U'zuhl the Skulltaker would spill their blood for it.

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The Slaughter of Karakura

Captain Yamamoto stared down Aizen.

Behind Aizen were his 3 top Arrancar and their fraccion, genetically altered hollows who were as powerful, if not more so, than a shinigami.

Behind Yamamoto were the elite members of the Gotei 13.

What few of their forces that weren't already there were fighting each other in Huecco Mundo. This battle now, would determine the outcome of the war. Who would be the victor? That was for them to decide. Both forces glared at each other, simply waiting for the order to attack.

Yamamoto began to speak

"Everyone. The lives of Thousands are at stake. Fight to the death. Even if the flesh melts from your bones, fight to the finish. Give it everything you have!"

And then everyone felt it.

A feeling of wrongness washed over everyone. It was as if something had entered into their dimension, and it had no business existing, let alone being here.

The sky….it was...pulsating.

It was turning blood red. There was an unholy sound that no mortal was meant to hear. It was the sound of disembodied daemonic chanting.

_Kill-..Maim-…Burn-…_ _Kill-..Maim-…Burn-…_ _Kill-..Maim-…Burn-…_ _Kill-..Maim-…Burn-…_ _Kill-..Maim-…Burn-…_ _Kill-..Maim-…Burn-…_

_Kill-..Maim-…Burn-… Kill-..Maim-…Burn-… Kill-..Maim-…Burn-… Kill-..Maim-…Burn-… Kill-..Maim-…Burn-… Kill-..Maim-…Burn-…_

Yamamoto was staring up at the sky, as well as everyone else.

_What on earth…_

"_Roo-_**ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"**

A black and red mist shot down from the sky and directly in between the two opposing forces.

Everyone was forced to shield their eyes from the baleful energy taking form.

A horrible creature began forming from the feet up. The first thing that could be made out was 4 massive brass hooves, each hoof the size of a truck tire. The hooves lead up to insanely thick brass plated legs with piston machinery visible at the heels. The legs lead up to the rest of a brass colored beast. It was horrifying to look at. It appeared as a brass plated, mechanical rhino with predatory teeth. The eyes glowed a furious red, casting waves of almost debilitating levels of hate on everything it viewed. The top of its head was a viciously jagged horn blade, taller and wider than a fully grown man. Both its shoulders had spikes sticking out the sides, with impaled skulls on both ends. On its neck was a spiked, blood stained collar with a thick chain leash. The creature was quite literally the size of a monster truck.

But that was simply the mount. The rider was much more terrifying.

Riding on the back of this beast was something comparable to the devil. The creature had blood red skin that was simply bulging in muscles. It was clad in black obsidian armor with a brass trim. Every plate of armor was filled in wit brass skulls. The creature had an elongated, skull engraved, head that seemed alien, as well as 4 horns. There were 2 large horns that extended over his head and curled over 2 skulls. Two smaller horns extended downward, just past his jaw. On its back was a long flowing cape, which inspired fear in everything that lay eyes on it. All across its cape were dozens, maybe hundreds of different skulls, many of them non-human. All the skulls had copper weaving in and out of the skull's eye sockets to keep them in place. In its hand was what many hesitated to call a sword. It was a long black, flaming saber that branched out into a dozen more jagged edges. If one stared hard, unholy runes could be seen on the blade, faintly glowing.

This creature had absolutely no reiatsu. Not as in, so little it wasn't worth mention, but literally non-existent.

Everything had at least _some _reiatsu. From tiny goldfish to spiritually aware humans, there was always something. To have absolutely none would mean that the creature before him didn't have a soul, a spirit, or anything.

Yamamoto was beginning to realize _why_ this creature reeked of wrongness and damnation.

A daemon. That was the only thing that could describe what he was looking at. It had no soul, and had a bottomless lust for destruction. But daemons are physically unable to leave hell!

Right?

The creature took notice of those that surrounded him.

"_Mor-_**MORTALS! **_Khor-_**KHORNE **_De-_**DEMANDS **_Be-_**BLOOD!"**

The creature monster dismounted from its hell-spawned beast and banished it. The horrendously large bull morphed into black and red smoke and ascended into the blood red sky, waiting on its master's order to ride to battle.

Then the creature did what everyone was prepared for but prayed it wouldn't do. It attacked.

The creature moved forward in a red blur, as if the daemon's very essence was struggling to keep up with its movements. It came straight for the nearest target.

Aizen.

Aizen just barely managed to bring his blade up in defense. Then something impossible happened.

Aizen's zanpakuto started to vocally scream when contact was made.

The Skulltaker, as well as all bloodletters, wielded swords made from the Soul Forge of the warp. Every blade eternally burned with a fire that scorched one's very soul to the touch. Zanpokutou were no exception.

"_You-_**YOU**_ Po-_**POSSESS**_ Yo-_**YOUR**_ We-_**WEAPONS**_ wi-_**WITH**_ so-_**SOULS? **_Pa-_**PATHETIC.**

The daemon wrapped a thick hand around Aizen's head, with its free arm. The others could only watch in shock and awe as this daemon did something unbelievable.

It crushed Aizen's skull with its bare hand.

The Skulltaker cared not for this one's skull. This mortal was a grand schemer and a practiced magician. He could tell by simply looking into the impudent bastard's soul. Even this battle was simply a ploy, which he planned to use as a trap. Schemers were cowards, and the Skulltaker detested cowards. His skull was unworthy for Khorne's throne. The daemon raised his flaming blade for all to see and channeled his daemonic fury into the blade.

Before everyone, the edges of the blade glowed a seering yellow and khornate runes glowed across the blade.

The Skulltaker swung down in an arc and bisected the near headless body from shoulder to hip, leaving a flaming vapor trail in the blade's wake. Aizen's soul was rended apart and burnt to cinders. As an afterthought, the daemon turned and loped Aizen's Zanpokutou in half as well. Anything that willingly allowed themselves to be used in cowardly ploys was as much a coward as the schemers themselves. The soul of the Zanpokutou suffered the same fate as Aizen's.

Momo stared in shock and heartbreak. That…thing….had it just…?

"_NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"_

The Captain-Commander tore his attention from the abomination that had murdered Aizen, and toward Momo, and his eyes widened. This girl flew toward the daemon at her fastest speed.

"SNAP, TOBUIME!"

She yelled out as her shikai activated. She aimed her sword and shot a fireball at the Daemon.

The Skulltaker barely glanced at the attack and let it hit him full force. A fire ball erupted outward and many of the arrancar gathered enough sense to either move back or harden their skin enough to mitigate the fire.

Momo stared at the fire with the utmost concentration, when the smoke began to clear. She was deeply disturbed when she saw that not only was Daemons unhurt, but completely unfazed. Across the armor, strange symbols with a passing resemblance to the number "8" began to glow with a searing red heat.

"_I-_**I **_A-_**AM **_Bl-_**BLESSED **_By-_**BY **_Khor-_**KHORNE! **_Cow-_**COWARDLY **_Ma-_**MAGIC **_Ha-_**HAS **_No-_**NO **_Ho-_**HOLD **_On-_**ON **_Me-_**ME!**

The daemon fazed forward cleaved down at the tiny girl in an arc. The blade's edges glowed yellow and left a flaming after image in its path.

Captain Hitsugaya Shunpo'd in front of Momo with his sword poised to block. When the Skulltakers howling blade made contact however, the Zanpokutou parted down the middle, along with the good captain. Hitsugaya and his Zanpokutou's souls immediately were both incinerated.

Blood splattered across Momo's face. Before she could even realize that the two people she cared for the most, had been so easily, and brutally, murdered, a flaming blade parted her head from her shoulders. Momo's Zanpokutou helplessly fell to the ground below. The Skulltaker didn't consider it worth the effort to crack open the blade and devour its soul.

Especially with all these victims surrounding him.

Yamamoto finally found his voice.

"Warriors of the Gotei 13! Ignore the Arrancar! Kill that monster immediately!"

At the mention of their name, the Arrancar finally realized what was happening around them.

Tosen took charge.

"Arrancar! That creature has just killed Aizen-sama! Avenge him!"

The Skulltaker glanced at either direction and noticed he was being assaulted. The daemon's unnaturally long tongue lashed out and licked some of the blood clean from his blade.

Then it smiled as well as a saber toothed daemon without lips could. Finally! A Challenge!

"_Bl-_**BLOOD **_For-_**FOR **_Th-_**THE **_Bl-_**BLOOD **_Go-_**GOD!"**

The first few to reach him where Vega, Soifon, and Omaeda.

"Sting all enemies to death, Suzumbachi!"

"Now smash them, Getsuburi!"

"Bite off, Tigre Estoque!"

The Skulltaker figured there battle cries needed a little work. He was unimpressed by the slight change in gravity there transformations caused. The change in weapons, he could care less for. As long as his enemy was actually capable with their tools, he could care less if these mortals fought him with eating utensils.

The daemon then saw a wrecking ball fly toward him. The daemon caught the spiked wrecking ball with one hand. Omaeda's eyes bugged out of his head. The daemon swung his blade and severed the chain. Omaeda heard Getsuburi's death cries, and was terrified.

Hefting the object, the Skulltaker turned and hurled the useless hunk of metal at the Mortal trying flank him. Vega's eye's widened and he sonido'd to the side, to avoid the wrecking ball. The Skulltaker huffed in irritation.

*stab* *stab*

The Skulltaker idly registered that he'd been poked twice. He glanced to his left to see an odd female standing there with a smug look on her face.

"Suzumbachi's poison kills in 2 hits. You're finished abomination."

The Skulltaker was tempted to facepalm himself.

"_Yo-_**YOU **_Dar-_**DARE **_Ha-_**HAVE **_The-_**THE **_Imp-_**IMPUDNCE **_To-_**TO **_Poi-_**POISON **_A_**-A **_Dae-_**DAEMON?"**

The skulltaker fazed forward, right into Soifon's face and kicked her away. The female rocketed through some 4 story, box shaped, human structure and out the other side. The Skulltaker cut down his enemies as fast as he possibly could on principle, but the sheer idiocy of trying to poison him, and with a mortal made weapon at that, deserved some extra torment.

The human he threw the wrecking ball at earlier, charged him. The Skulltaker fazed slightly to the left, making the mortal miss with all three of his meat cleavers. The Skulltaker slashed downward and decapitated this annoyance with arrogant ease. The Skulltaker didn't notice, nor particularly care, that he slashed off both the mortal's arms along with his head.

Realizing that the one that actually swung the wrecking ball in the first place was still alive, he fazed up to him.

"Please! Don't kill me! I have a fam-"

***CHOP***

The Skulltakers hated beggers far more than cowards. A coward might come back to redeem what little pride it can, but a beggar honestly expects his better to spare him from a rightly earned execution.

The Herald of Khorne was suddenly blasted with a cero. He was knocked off balance briefly but otherwise was unaffected, thanks to his khorne blessed armor. The daemon turned and bellowed at his new opponent.

"_Wh-_**WHO **_Da-_**DARE **_St-_**STRIKE **_Me-_**ME **_Wi-_**WITH **_Wa-_**WATER!"**

"It is I, Tia Harribel. You will pay for what you did to Aizen-sama monster." The blond Californian woman stated with confidence. Some of that confidence was lost when she felt waves of unreasonable hatred resonate on to her from the Daemon.

"_I-_**I **_Wi-_**WILL **_Ri-_**RIP **_Yo-_**YOUR **_Hear-_**HEART **_Out-_**OUT **_And-_**AND **_Eat-_**EAT **_You-_**YOUR **_Soul-_**SOUL!"**

The daemon fazed forward and swung his daemonic sword at the woman. She was barely able to Sonido backward fast enough to avoid the swing. Before the Skulltaker could press his attack, he was forced to block a cleaving axe swing from an older mortal with a permanently closed right eye. The Skulltaker idly noticed that the swords belonging to these particular mortals simply had their own power sealed inside their swords, and not an actual piece of their soul. For him, all that meant was that they'd actually be able to parry his blows instead having their swords die the second their blades touch. Willingly locking away the bulk of your own power in a weapon you used for war, made absolutely no sense to the Skulltaker. Why willingly handicap yourself, when you'll inevitably bring that power to bare in a fight anyway?

"So you're a daemon huh? You are still inferior to me, monster. But I do thank you for killing Aizen. I always hated him."

The skulltaker pushed the irritating mortal off with his sword arm. With his left hand he punched away the annoying mortal.

"Destroy, Tiburon"

"Rot, Arrogante"

The Tercera and Segundo espada both activated their ressurecion at the same time. Barragan turned into a crowned skeleton in kingly yet flaming robes. Tia's clothes simply changed to something befitting of a Slaaneshi herald. Since both passively reminded him of the competitor chaos gods, Nurgle and Slaanesh, he decided they'd both receive a painful death.

Barragan emitted purplish smog that expanded outward. All of the Arrancar immediately cleared the area. The shinigami realized they were probably avoiding it for good reason and followed their example. The foreign substance washed over the Skulltaker and attempted to age him into non-existence. That Khornate daemon noticied the blood on his sword shrivel up, harden, and then turn to red dust. The daemon bit back the urge to laugh. Did this mortal truly intend to _age _him into submission? The Skulltaker had lived for countless millennia, creating folk legends of himself murdering the greatest warriors of some the oldest species in existence. He lived in a plane where time and logic had no hold. He was _immortal _for Khorne's sake! What could something as pathetic as _time _do to him?

The daemon fazed forward and wrapped one of his clawed hands around Barragan's skull. He yanked forward, but was disappointed when the skull didn't immediately brake off. Instead, he rammed his knee into the mortal's chest and broke every rib his knee touched. The mortal made a feeble punch at him with his bony arm. The Skulltaker loped the offending limb off the second he noticed it.

"IMPOSSIBLE! I AM A GOD! THE RULER OF TIME! NO ONE CAN TOUCH ME!"

The Skulltaker paused.

A god? Him? This deluded mortal truly thinks himself divine? The skulltaker knew precisely how to punish him.

The Skulltaker's blade weaved in flaming and fluent arcs. In 3 flaming strokes of his hellblade the mortal was completely dismembered. Barraggan screamed in pain as his arms and legs were viciously sheared off.

The Skulltaker wondered if this next part was truly necessary. His opponent lay limbless and all the flesh was already absent from his body. The Khornate mentally shrugged and decided he should, if nothing else, for the sense of tradition. He'd been following the same practice religiously for untold millennia. No need to make an exception now.

The aging fog that this miserable whelp wielded had begun clearing away since the Skulltaker first placed his hands on him. Now that it was gone, all could bare witness to this next event. The Skulltaker lifted up the limbless Barraggan for all to see.

Then the Daemon spoke the 8 words of Sacrifice.

Magical flames engulfed the limbless body and burned away the crown, clothing, life, and the very soul of the Mortal. Barraggan screaming the entire time, only enhanced the experience. With a violent twist and yank, the skull was pried off the mortal's shoulders. The daemon gave the skull a baleful glare right before crushing it in his hand.

He felt a massive wave of pride from a daemonic entity infinitely more powerful than he was, and acknowledge it. Khorne was pleased with the Skulltaker's treatment of the fool.

The Skulltaker was quite sure he would have many more of such treatments to come.

"_Wh-_**WHO **_Is-_**IS **_Ne-_**NEXT?"**

"Us."

The Skulltaker turned to face his attackers.

The woman from earlier as well as her 3 apparent underlings stared him down with wariness and fear.

Already, he was disgusted.

Of all the skulls he personally owned, a fourth of them were human skulls, space marines to be exact. They were mortals that would fight him without an ounce of fear. He could rend apart the strongest of their number and shower the rest with that champion's blood, yet they'd still each fight him to the death. In fact, they only became more vicious in combat when he killed their strongest, motivating the rest to fight harder. Unlike others, when they stated that they held no fear, they truly meant it. In truth, the mortals of the astartes, orks, necrons, and tyranids had spoiled him. Those being the most common foes he faced, outside of fellow daemons, he came to expect all of his enemies to be fearless ruthless, and aggressive. And he enjoyed it greatly.

Now, as he looked around and saw all the intimidated mortals around him, he suddenly remembered that most mortals were, at heart, weak and cowardly. He couldn't expect all his foes to be fearless, relentless, and persistent. As such, he threw away all notions of honorable combat and opted to instead, simply slaughter these mortals like lambs.

A bald mortal with pure white hair making up his mustache, spoke to him.

"We don't know why you have come here daemon, but it is our duty to-"

The Skulltaker had no such interest in listening to these mortals speak about duty and what they would try to do. He only cared for their actions, not their words.

He fazed forward and sliced downward at the balding human. This human teleported backward, using his infernal magic. Without even looking, the Skulltaker blocked a swing at his back from the mortal with a shark tooth shaped sword.

"Don't turn your back on me mon-"

The Skulltaker fazed so that he was face to face the annoying bitch. With a casual stroke of his blade, Tia Harribel's stomach was sliced open. Another stroke and Tia Harribel's head was loped from her shoulders.

The daemon decided he should practice more on his decapitation swings. The woman's neck stump was far more jagged a cut then he liked.

"MASTER!" 3 voices cried at once.

The Khornate looked up at this woman's underlings. They all had masks of rage, but he knew how mortal's minds worked. They would see someone dear to them get killed by his hand and either go to a fury before succumbing to fear and regret, or they would see their loved one die and go straight to fear and regret then and there. The previously listed enemies he faced back in his dimension were the only instances where neither was the case.

The Daemon figured he may as well savor their fury while it lasted.

Then these females did something odd. They all grabbed their left arms. The limbs turned into red lights and met in the center of the three.

The Skulltaker recognized what they were doing all too well. He had experienced it both on the giving and receiving end numerous times, and been raptly interested throughout the entire process.

These little witches were doing a summoning ritual.

But summoning what? What self-respecting daemon would take 3 left arms as payment? It was a rule of thumb that one soul was the absolute minimum payment to get a favor from a daemon. And more importantly, what daemon could these children summon that would honestly be a match for him? What daemon could they summon that would feel his presence and not flee with thoughts of self-preservation?

The creature materialized and Skulltaker immediately broke into laughter.

"_Ha-_**HA! **_Ha-_**HA! **_Ha-_**HA! **_Yo-_**You **_Su-_**Summoned **_A-_**A **_Cha-_**CHAOS **_Spa-_**SPAWN **_To-_**TO **_Ba-_**BATTLE **_Me-_**ME?"**

In truth, had it been anyone else, the Skulltaker would've been deeply insulted by such a thing, and have brutally murdered the one who summoned such a creature. It was only because he was quite sure they had no idea what they had just done, that he didn't punish them for it.

It was fairly powerful to be sure, but in truth they had simply summoned a giant undivided chaos spawn. Such daemonic creatures were so pathetic that at times they were simply thrown into battle for the amusement of the commanders both mortal and daemon alike. Something about mindless pounds of flesh that were once chaos champions, running into the guns and blades of enemy weapons was deeply satisfying to watch. At one point he had sent over a 100 chaos spawn to attack a force of human Grey Knights. The laughs that were had in watching those mutants being slaughtered by daemonhunters were priceless.

As suspected, the spawn didn't do anything to him. It simply stared beneath its fur, as if assessing a predator.

Spawn had very animalistic thinking. There was a master, there were those the master didn't approve of attacking, and there were predators. If you weren't one of the first 3 then you were a target. Unfortunately for the 3 witches, the Skulltaker was chaos daemon, a herald of Khorne at that. Chaos Spawn, by instinct, feared daemons of any and all sizes and considered them as predators. Chaos Spawn Allon had no desire to trifle with a high level chaos daemon, regardless of what feelings master felt for it.

The Skulltaker fazed directly in front of the giant spawn and spoke to it with warp energy. He demanded that it retreat back to the warp or face his wrath.

Allon immediately retracted back to the warp and returned the left arms back to the 3 witches that had summoned him.

Apacci, Sun-Sung, and Mila-Rose all were shocked to the core. Had this creature just…scared Allon away? How was that even possible?

Before they could ponder much more, the Skulltaker fazed in between them. The Skulltaker's hellblade carved swift and bloody arcs through the 3 fraccion. Before anyone could blink, the bisected bodies of the 3 fraccion fell to the ground.

"Ryuujin jakka strike one. Sweeping slice."

The Captain-commander swung his sword at the Skulltaker once, before sheathing his blade.

Then he waited for confirmation. Then he waited longer.

"_Wer-_**WERE **_Yo-_**YOU **_Ex-_**EXPECTING **_So-_**SOMETHING **_Mo-_**MORTAL? **_Cow-_**COWARDLY **_Ma-_**MAGIC **_Ha-_**HAS **_No-_**NO **_Ho-_**HOLD **_On-_**ON **_Me-_**ME."**

Captain-Commander's eyes widened. Did this daemon mean to say that reiatsu based attacks had no effect on him? Impossible! But…the evidence was there. The daemon had taken Momo's fireball and shrugged off the damage. Soifon's infamous 2 stings of death hadn't worked. The nameless Espada's ability to accelerate aging and decay hadn't even phased the daemon. It even took a cero the back barely even flinched.

"Everyone! Use your Zanpokutou and that only. Kido and other Reiatsu based attacks are incapable of defeating it. Cutting it to pieces is the only way to kill it!" Yamamoto announced.

The remaining Arrancar and shinigami obeyed. Some of the strongest attacks they could muster were thrown at the Skulltaker, and the creature hadn't even been scratched yet. The sound of drawn swords echoed across the sky.

For the first time this fight, the Skulltaker was genuinely excited. Finally! They realized how feeble their magic was and came to close in glorious melee!

"_Ye-_**YES! **_Fi-_**FIGHTING! **_Ki-_**KILLING!"**

The fools flew at him from all angles.

Choe Neng Poww came from over head with a downward swing. The Daemon blocked and fazed up to one of the fools that actually _worshipped _that piece of trash that he'd disposed of earlier. The Skulltaker couldn't decapitate this idiot quickly enough, in his opinion. The arrancar's head hadn't even fully rolled off his shoulders when the next one came. Findor had already activated his ressurecion beforehand and fired pressurized water at point blank. The Daemon was insulted by the use of water against him and flat out ignored its effects. The fool tried to clamp down on him with his crab claw. The Khornate herald removed the oversized limb with an underhand swing. A clean horizontal stroke and Findor's head and body fell in two different directions.

The Skulltaker inspected this neck stump. Cleaner cut, but still needed improvement. Warp dammit, these weaklings were making him sloppy.

"Flower Wind Rage and Flower God Roar, Heavenly Wind Rage and Heavenly Demon Sneer"

Captain Shunsui activated his shikai and held in his hands two scimitar blades. He was pleased to hear that his Zanpokutou was in the mood to fight, now that her life was in every bit as much danger as his. The Captain flashed stepped behind the Skulltaker and swung at his back. The daemon quickly whipped around with his empty hand and blocked the blade with his forearm guard. Captain Kyoraku's eyes widen as his blade is halted by the brass armor. That moment of hesitation nearly causes him his life. The daemon's hellblade would've impaled him had he not shunpo'd in time.

"Growl, Haineko."

The daemon looked around and noticed the ash that was surrounding him. The dust shot across his arm and made a light paper cut on his unarmored bicep.

The daemon frowned. Using dust as a weapon? He permitted whatever weapons his opponents wished to wield, but this was ridiculous. What's next? Using flowers?

"My Zanpakutou is the dust you see around you foul daemon." She sounded like a Grey Knight. He hated Grey knights. "You're surrounded by my sword."

The daemon suppressed a sigh and fazed forward.

"You'll pay for killing my-"

***SLASH***

The bitches' eyes stared at the Skulltaker in shock before glazing over. Her upper body went in one direction and her lower body in the other. As payment for nicking him, the daemon caught the pommel of her sword and bit into it. He sucked out the soul of this "Haineko" from the sword handle and swallowed it whole. Her screams tickled his taste buds. Captain Shunsui appeared behind him once more, ready to swing, but the Khorne daemon was ready for him this time. The Skulltaker's elbow shot back and impacted his jaw. The jaw bone shifted unnaturally and broke. The flaming hellblade of the Skulltaker swung at the foolish shinigami with less than pretty results.

Kyroraku managed to bring both swords up on reflex but all that had served to do was damn both him and his Zanpakutou. The hellblade's flames sliced through the blade and soul of his Zanpokutou then continued onward into the good captain himself. The Khornate herald wasn't done however. He swung again and cleaved through the Captain's back, shoulders, and chest, bisecting him once more. Finally, the daemon decapitated Kyoraku entirely.

If a tzeentch herald was present, it'd have complemented the Skulltaker for "Changing a warrior mage into a collection of falling body parts". The Skulltaker disdained Tzeentch heralds almost as much as Grey Knights. Always schemeing and plotting behind his back. The few times he did have the pleasure of killing Tzeentch heralds, he always wound up finding out that he had simply been a pawn in a more complex scheme that involved a _different_ tzeentch daemon. He had finally gotten fed up and avoided the scralls of tzeentch more feverishly then he avoided the plagues of Nurgle.

The Skulltaker reflexively blocked a sword strike from some obese, bone helmet wearing idiot who also worshipped that fool he had killed earlier.

Oh yeah. He was supposed to be killing these annoyances.

The arrancar flew backward before the Skulltaker could cleave him in two, as he had demonstrated his capacity for doing multiple times already.

"Trample, Mamu-"

The Skulltaker interrupted him by cleaving the bastards head in two. If he heard another pathetic battle cry like that one more time…

"We have no choice! Activate your full powers! Shikai, Bankai, Ressureciones! By any means necessary, kill that Daemon!"

"Reduce All Creation to Ash, Ryuujin Jakka."

"Roar, Todoroki. Bankai!"

"Extend, Hozukimaru! Bankai!"

"Cry, Suzumishi. Bankai!

….

….

….

The Skulltaker didn't hear the rest. He shuddered in pure anger at the list of absurd and incessant battle cries.

He idly noticed that a few of them were getting particularly stronger, while the rest simply got another pointless magical weapon, that the blessing of the blood god shielded him from. Figuring he'd have his desert first and save the damnable vegetables for later, he attacked those that had _appeared _to have grown in martial skill.

"_Mo-_**MORE **_Blo-_**BLOOD **_Fo-_**FOR **_Kho-_**KHORNE!"**

The daemon fazed directly in front of the human with 3 massive chain-linked weapons. The human wielded a weapon that most Bloodthirsters would find a bit of difficulty trying to wield. Logically, this human should be sufficiently skilled enough for a challenge. Right?

The human twirled his weapon in the sky before swinging it downward. The herald cut through the weapon with a simple under hand stroke and decapitated the human with another hellblade stroke.

The Skulltaker found himself suppressing the urge to run himself through with his own sword and fight the rest of the battle mortally wounded and with his bare-hands. Perhaps then he could find something vaguely reminiscent of a challenge.

The Skulltaker looked up and noticed he had been surrounded by some sort of black dome sphere.

When did this happen?

"This whole dome you see before you is my Bankai."

Khorne Dammit.

"Here, your vision, reiatsu sense, and hearing are all gone. You are surrounded in darkness and at my mercy. You'll die and never see me coming."

"_I-_**I **_Ca-_**CAN **_See-_**SEE **_Ta-_**TASTE **_An-_**AND **_He-_**HEAR **_Yo-_**YOUR **_So-_**SOUL **_Mor-_**MORTAL!"**

The daemon ran the dark skinned mortal through on his sword, and stabbed the sword into the ground with the mortal still attached. He yanked the blade out of the ground and the body and brutally stomped on the body for good measure.

How satisfying! Now he knew why Angron enjoyed doing this to the Grey Knights so much during the first war of Armageddon! Stomping a freshly killed carcass into the dirt was almost as good a feeling as decapitating a skilled warrior!

The daemon fazed out of the rapidly deteriorating dome he had been trapped in and gazed upon what was left.

An animalistic mortal had a giant armored warrior standing behind him in the exact same stance he was in. The old mortal that had kept taking passes at him was standing shirtless with his sword out and magical flames reaching across his body. A mortal with closed eyes was aiming a sword at him like a ranged-weapon. A muscular mortal under the impression that he was a female, was wearing a ridiculous outfit that even a Slaaneshi herald would hesitate to wear. A mortal had taken the form of a red bird. A mortal with 2 chain-linked short scythes stared him down with hatred. The impudent mortal he had kicked away earlier was aiming a magic missile at him. A man had 2 soul possessed pistols aimed at him. A mortal with peacock feathers had plant vines growing out his sword pommel.

The Skulltaker went over the memory of his first arrival and noted that there were at least 2 others absent from the group.

The Khornate daemon looked over his shoulder and saw a human with a box haircut and sun glasses standing behind him. To his right was a man with white hair and a black mustache. To his left was a man with white chest length hair. Directly in front of him was a man with a blonde comb over.

They rushed from all sides at once, blades drawn. In less than 3 seconds all 4 four the mortals and their soul possessed weapons were cut to ribbons. Not a single full body fell to the ground, that wasn't at the last missing a head or a few limbs.

"_Pa-_**PATHETIC **_Cre-_**CREATURES!"**

The daemon saw these mortals were essentially prepared to fight with their all now that they were at their apparent "full power", as if such a thing made any difference since what he hesitated to call a fight even began. The Skulltaker saw the determination in their eyes and decided to test it.

He called back his mount.

"_Roh-_**RO'HOS! **_Co-_**COME! **_Le-_**LET **_Us-_**US **_Sla-_**SLAUGHTER **_The-_**THEM!"**

The familiar black and red smoke descended from the clouds and the "fighting force" that had assembled looked on in dread. Was it another of those daemons? One of them had butchered more half of their original number. A second one would surely spell destruction for all.

The Brass clad bull from earlier materialized. The beast snarled at the mortals as if felt its masters' ire towards them.

Those that angered the master would receive the most gruesome and painful death that its forehead blade, steel teeth, and brass hooves could possible cause.

The Skulltaker mounted his brass colored juggernaut and both creatures fazed forward, both roaring and charging with unholy fury.

"_Blo-_**BLOOD! **_Blo-_**BLOOD! **_Blo-_**BLOOD! **_Blo-_**BLOOOOOOOOOOOOD!**

_**End**_

Author's note: Believe me. You don't want to know what happens next.

In my story "The Humans Strike Back" I noticied several of you were disappointed in the lack of casualties humanity inflicted on their Shinigami counterparts. I figured the best way to make it up to you was a short 40k crossover that has a Khornate daemon messing everyone's shit up.

Sincerely

Psykotic Addiction


	2. Butchering of Halkeginia

**Author's Note: **First up is familiar of zero. A story about a seemingly inept mage who learns that she isn't inept at all, just so powerful she can't properly control her spells like other mages. She summons a Japanese stereotype boy as her familiar, (someone who is easily flustered and can't talk himself out of a bad situation for shit… like most male anime protagonists). Together, they get into one situation, which leads to another and another until I'm thinking "How the hell did catching a thief lead up to all of this crap?" It also doesn't help that the running gag of Saito literally glancing at another woman for a split second before getting blown up wasn't that amusing to begin with. And then they kept doing it to an average of 4-8 times an episode.

Supposedly, this civilization they're in has been stagnant for over 6,000 or so years, if the word of dozens of different stories are to be believed.

An 8 year old retarded kid would have a lot of questions for that story.

First. Not a single dictatorship/class system/feudal system similar to the noble over commoner system has ever lasted 1/4th as long as that. Magic or not, human beings have a natural instinct to carve out their own living how they want it, regardless of what any other person says. The commoners being put down by magic time and again, I can understand, but damn! Humans didn't earn the title 'adapters' because it sounded nice. There aren't any commoner terrorist-esque organizations in FoZ, well-trained commoner assassins, or anything you'd expect to come from a human group that's been abused for 6,000 years. A full fledge hostile takeover would be a gradual process, but not THAT gradual. You'd think the commoners enjoy their treatment, for how little they complain about it or act against it.

Second. They've been stagnant for 6,000 years? We may not have had magic to work with, but we'd never just 'stay still'. It took 6,000 years for those idiots to invent 'the musket'. One of the first fire arms ever invented, and apparently it's pretty useful for fighting nobles. In fact, commoner armies can now effectively fight nobles with the weapon. It took what, a couple hundred years for us to pump out muskets? In about 1,500 more years, we damn near eliminated the purpose of having infantry in the first place. We have war machines and robots strapped with guns to do _almost_ everything a normal soldier does. Mr. Colbert makes his own engine at one point, which I'm pretty sure makes him the Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Jefferson of his entire universe, since no one else has come anywhere close to accomplishing that. Wouldn't you know that absolutely no one cares.

FoZ in general feels like everyone is hopelessly lazy and static about what they do in life. The Nobles are content to wave their magic around, spend their whole life trying to climb up the social ladder, and raise their kids to follow in their footsteps. The commoners are content to maintain their day jobs, be awed by noble's magic (despite seeing it waved in their faces for the past 6,000 years), and in general act like helpless, hopeless, towns people. The whole universe they live in is orderly, and God help you if you decide to sneeze in a different manner than everyone else does.

They're way overdue for some chaos in their lives.

xxXxx

"Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière!"

Speak of the Devil and he appears, laughing and dancing in mockery of the fools who dare summon him...

The balding teacher looked up from the class list, peering over the top of his spectacles at Louise, who had frozen in place with fear. The whole courtyard had suddenly fallen silent.

"Mademoiselle de la Vallière?" Colbert repeated gently.

Louise snapped out it. "Y-yes?" she said – no, squeaked, her voice sounding far higher than she ever thought possible. How undignified.

"It's your turn, mademoiselle," Professor Colbert said once more, smiling reassuringly at her. "You can do it, young lady, I'm sure of it."

Louise took a moment to compose herself, then nodded once and stepped forward. She dimly noted as she walked to the center of the courtyard that the students were arranged in a half-circle around the summoner, facing the tested student's back. According to the teachers, this was to ensure that the summoner wouldn't be distracted by their peers during the ceremony. A simple, logical reason that everyone accepted without further doubt.

Louise knew better: the Springtime Summoning Ritual was dangerous. Incorrectly drawn or smudged lines of chalk, a faulty sequence or syntax of the runes bordering the circle, the sloppy drawing of the summoning circle or the other necessary geometric shapes in the summoning array – there were a myriad of ways in which the ritual could go horribly wrong, and Louise was confident she knew nearly all of them because of the ludicrous amount of time she spent in the library, hoping that it would help her improve her chances of succeeding.

Of course, the descriptions of possible mistakes to make only served to rattle her already frayed nerves even more.

If the summoning backfired, the least that would happen was that a far less powerful creature would be summoned. In the worst case scenario, the summoning circle would explode, releasing large amounts of stray magic and killing everyone in the blast radius.

Louise could accept a weaker summons, as long as she summoned anything at all. She needed proof that she was a real mage, that she deserved the title of nobility that her birth had granted her. She needed that confirmation, desperately so.

"Thou creature of power and magic, through time and space I call you."

_**Why should I listen? **_

Louise jumped in surprise, scanning her surroundings. A deep guttural voice had seemingly growled in her ear but no one else seemed to have heard. She quickly wrote it off as her imagination and maintained her spell.

"Thou creature who seeks the meaning of your existence, I call you."

_**I know why I exist feeble mortal. Do you?**_

Louise shuttered on the inside. Was she going crazy? How did no one else hear that voice? She knew for certain she couldn't have imagined it.

"Thou creature who will protect me, I call you."

_**I will do no such thing, whelp.**_

Louise's gut clenched. This voice was responding to everything she said in sync. This couldn't possibly be her imagining it. Was this her familiar preemptively speaking with her? Was it rebelling from being summoned? She didn't know how to feel toward such a possibility. The voice sounded far more powerful than most familiars, even Tabitha's dragon. It could be larger dragon for all she know. But if it comes out acting like she hears, how will she make it loyal? What if it truly does not listen?

"Come, creature. I'd give you strength, I'd give you power, I'd give a cause. I call you."

_**How laughable. A feeble weakling like you offers me something that I already have in plentiful supply.**_

Louise took a deep breath and took to ignoring the voice. If her familiar was going to be rebellious, than she'd have to deal with it when that time came. First, however, she'd have to bring it here.

"Creature! Appear!"

_**ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!**_

The ground before Louise suddenly erupted with warp fire. Louise backed up approximately 3 steps in surprise, staring at the ground as it burned. She could here students begin to laugh, thinking that she had messed up the spell and made the grass catch on fire. Louise didn't acknowledge them however, as this fire seemed to have a mind of its own. The fire on the ground suddenly spread outward across the grass, making rectangular shape in the earth. Then some of the fire disappeared in sections, while most of it seemingly burned deeper into the ground.

The image she saw take form was both odd and slightly frightening at the same time. It was obviously a symbol, but what it represented was beyond her knowledge.

The image was an 8 pointed star.

Just when Mr. Colbert was about to speak, something happened.

The 8 pointed star that was burned into the soil, actually _lifted_ off the ground. Every student suddenly became silent as burning earth, shaped like a circle with 8 extending prongs, simply hovered in the air, pulsating with an unholy aura.

_**You have the nerve to summon me? Very well. LET THE RED RIVER FLOW!**_

The 8 pointed star exploded outward in a burst of dirt and fire. Everyone screamed in surprise, covering their heads, averting their eyes, or curling up into the fetal position.

Before Louise could look back at the scene, _something wrapped around her head._ Louise screamed in surprise, informing the others that something was wrong. The pinkette was lifted off the ground easily, and with her face covered, she couldn't see anything but the red, clawed hand clamped around her skull.

Louise heard screams of terror all around her, assumedly at the appearance of her familiar.

She heard Mr. Colbert yell out demands that it release her, but she was incapable of fully understanding due the hand (if it was indeed that, and not a surprisingly nimble dragon's paw) partially covering her ears. She suddenly lurched forward, which meant her familiar had lurched forward and taken her for the ride. She suddenly heard Mr. Colbert scream, followed by a sound that haunted her for the rest of her life.

***CHOP***

Louise heard more screaming as students ran away in terror. She didn't know what happened, but she wasn't dumb. She was almost certain her familiar had just killed the professor. With that thought in her head, she started thrashing and yelling with all her might to get free of the dragon's grip around her skull.

"_Ha-_**HA** _Ha-_**HA** _Ha_-**HA!"**

Louise shivered as she heard the creature's voice. Not only could it talk, but the thing actually had an _echo_ in its voice, if she was hearing right.

"_A-_**A** _Wor-_**WORLD** _Of-_**OF** _Psy-_**PSYKERS **_An-_**AND** _Ma-_**MAGICIANS?** _I-_IT _Wi-_**WILL** _Ma-_**MAKE** _A-_**A** _Gre-_**GREAT** _Sa-_**SACRIFICE** _Fo-_**FOR** _Kho-_**KHORNE!"**

"Familiar, I demand you release me this instant! What have you done? Why is everyon-" She didn't get much farther than that.

The hand around her head tightened and squeezed. She started screaming in pain and panic as the hand tightened around her skull. She began kicking and flailing far more ferociously than before, tears freely falling from her face.

Her struggle was ended when the hand finally clamped into a fist around her head.

Louise Francoise le Blanc de la Vallierie's head was crushed into a pulp.

The skulltaker errantly tossed the body to the side as it set its sights on the castle before it. The daemon intended to take this area as its own, and slaughter everything and everyone it crossed along the way.

Guards came running from around the school's courtyard, armed with an assortment of pikes, swords, maces, and other close combat weapons. The skulltaker stood its full height at 10 feet tall, twice as tall as a grown man. This observation alone caused many to question their own resolve in fighting such a massive beast. Then the skulltaker's hellblade, also longer than a grown man, was raised high. The weapon was covered in flames of the warp, fire that burnt ones very soul. This caused many to come to a halt, just from the sheer diabolical appearance of the weapon. Then finally they laid their eyes on the skulltaker himself.

The term 'skulltaker' wasn't simply an honorific amongst fellow khornate daemons. It was quite literal in its connotation. The daemon had skull imagery on every piece armor it wore, as well as certain places on its very skin, but the real meaning of the term was made apparent by the cloak the daemon wore. Dozens, maybe hundreds of skulls were weaved into the cloak by what appeared to be brass wires going in and out of empty eye sockets. Many of those skulls didn't seem to be human at all.

The skulltaker was briefly excited to see easily over 100 armed mortals running at him, but his excitement waned when the mortals halted before him. Each and every one of them had fear in their eyes, and a few were even showing signs of cowardice by backing away slowly. The khornate herald deeply detested cowards.

The herald of khorne phased forward in a blur of red energy. Before any of the men could blink, a jagged black sword was carving through their ranks with absolutely no regard for the armor or flesh in its path. The daemon said only one thing, but it horrified everyone within ear shot to the very core.

"_Bl-_**BLOOD** _Fo-_**FOR** _Th-_**THE** _Bl-_**BLOOD** _Go-_**GOD!"**

xxXxx

**20 days later**

Word of what occurred at the magic academy spread quickly across the continent of Halkeginia. Tales of a creature half way between dragon and man, slaying all those who stood before it with a sword of flame. Any brave soul that dare challenge it, the creature readily accepted. Every duel ended the same however. The challenger was decapitated and his or her head taken into the daemonic fortress, that was once a magic academy.

The church of Brimir planned to end that today however.

The warped academy, now adorned with the skulls of hundreds, was surrounded. Warriors, mercenaries, and mages of all classes gathered around the area with demands from the church. Without a doubt, the appearance of a fabled creature being slain would be passed down for centuries. Any noble that contributed to the cause would earn glory and status. As well, many of the magic users had come to avenge the deaths of their children, and even a few of the staff who had died in the attack. The mercenaries were simply there to be paid, but for battle purpose would only be meat shields at best.

With such overwhelming force, it was obvious that the monster would be slain. All these people were here simply to be involved, maybe contribute importantly enough to have a mention in the ensuing stories that would be passed down (with plentiful exaggerations of their part for sure).

With a square class fire spell, the front gates were blown open.

Letting loose a mighty roar, the mercenaries charged forward into the gate. Slowly the momentum and fury spread throughout the ranks as more and more people felt the battle adrenaline start to kick in. Soon, people were getting over the academy's defensive walls however they could. Be it using magic to blow open holes, bringing up ladders, or levitating over the walls they managed to get around. They were certain that with such vigor on their side, they wouldn't lose.

"_Ro-_**ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"**

The earth actually _shook _with ferocity and anger in that roar. The few dragons present were actually cowed by the sound of a superior creature's anger being vented.

Everyone stopped in their tracks, the vigor long forgotten.

Without warning, one of the most evil sights these people would ever see emerged by smashing through a solid stone wall.

The skulltaker was mounted on the most loyal and powerful beast a warrior of Khorne could ever have the honor of riding. A juggernaut of Khorne, a rare brass colored juggernaut at that, came thundering through the stone wall as if it had simply gone through ply wood. The skulltaker rode on the creature's back, using the spikes on its shoulder to place his feet, while gripping the chain attached to its collar to keep himself balanced. The skulltaker appeared to the humans as a hellish knight, thick chain 'reins' in one hand, and a black flaming sword in the other. When coupled with the fact that the combined height of the skulltaker and the juggernaut made them 30 ft tall, it appeared to everyone as if they were about to do battle with a god.

The skulltaker briefly took in the opposition he'd be facing. About the size of a battalion at best. It'd be a hefty order and if none of these mortals could stand against him individually, it'd get quite boring pretty fast, but the daemon undertook the challenge anyway.

Both he and his mount bellowed their endless fury into the sky, frightening the mortals around far more than they already were, before charging into the nearest gaggle of mortals they could find.

Heads and limbs went flying in all directions.

xxXxx

The skulltaker was quickly getting bored.

The infantrymen were hopelessly pathetic, as they had begun running in fear before he had even slain one of them yet. The skulltaker quickly began to feel as if he was herding these human soldiers, rather than fighting them. All they did was flee as the juggernaut gored them by the dozens with its horn and trampling hooves. There may be one or two that would occasionally scrounge up the courage to strike at the juggernaut, but the daemon's half mechanical body made such blows glance off without even a chink. The skulltaker slashed down from the top of the beast, reaping their skulls in a manner comparable to a farmer reaping wheat. These soldiers weren't much in combat, but at the very least, watching their blood splatter with every swing was pleasing to watch.

The mages were irritating and useless at the same time. With his collar of khorne, magic attacks were about as effective as flinging rocks. Interestingly enough, the square class earth mages had taken to flinging boulders and sending golems at the skulltaker at one point. They were disappointed when both of these shattered into hundreds of pieces when his mount head butted the things with its jagged horn. Disappointment turned into terror as he quickly ran down the offenders and either trampled them into paste, or removed their heads from their shoulders. The other types of mages simply wouldn't accept that their magic was ineffectual and kept trying anyway. Despite him being immune to the magic, the effects it caused around him were very annoying. More than once, he was engulfed in a magical inferno and nearly fell off his mount because the fire had burned away the earth around him, causing his juggernaut to lose its footing occasionally when it charged through the scorched earth. The herald of khorne eventually decided that enough was enough and ran down every damnable foot mage in sight.

The flying mages were quite irritating however.

He was unable to chase them down because their mounts, be them dragons, gryphons, or manticores, all had wings. His juggernaut would assuredly decimate one of those puny creatures in close combat, but allas, it couldn't fly. Had the skulltaker entered by warp rift, he could use the bleeding warp energy to make himself fly and gut those cowardly bastards. As it was however, he was grounded, due to himself being summoned through a ritual and not having the excess warp energy to use at his disposal.

He only allowed himself to come in the first place because khorne had wanted him to despoil more of these 'alternate universes'. To the daemon's credit however, the blood god informed him not to linger too long, if the world he was in didn't offer any worthy opponents.

The skulltaker took this as, 'if he kills over 200 mortals, and isn't offered a single battle worthy of a skull ritual, then he has every right to leave'.

Looking over the carnage he caused, temporarily ignoring those pesky flying wizards, he saw that all the mortals were retreating. The mages, soldiers, and even the mage knights were pulling out. The mortals had realized that they not only were unequipped, but also too incompetent to defeat a single bloodcrusher of Khorne, much less Khorne's holy executioner himself. They were weak before him and fled like the cowards they were.

All but one.

Karin the Heavy Wind landed before the Skulltaker, her manticore growling in hostility.

The skulltaker's juggernaut released an even deeper growl, with a fair bit of warp energy in response to the mortal mount's challenge to it.

The pink haired woman was wearing a dueling harness and had her hair in a ponytail to keep it out of her field of vision. She had the steel of a real warrior, the skulltaker would admit, but that was only compliment the skulltaker had for the mortal. She was a mage, a monger of cowardly magic, and by extension, a coward at her very core. This mage would die like the rest.

"_Ano-_**ANOTHER** _Pa-_**PATHETIC** _Ma-_**MAGICIAN.** _Die-_**DIE** _Li-_**LIKE** _th-_**THE** _Re-_**REST!"**

As the battle, if one would call it that, progressed, Karin had sat back and watched. She gained tactical information on how to best this foe. Its mount was strong. Strong enough to run straight through numerous golems, trample countless men and women, and not even pause for rest. The creature riding the brass bull was an expert in sword play, clearly identified in the way it flowed with its sword strokes. Its weapon was able to cut through anything. She had seen it slice straight through other swords and thick armor like they were made of cotton. The creature's armor was immune to arrows and swords, as was the hide of its mount. Most important of all, magic based attacks didn't work. Directly at least. It seemed to an outside observer that the only way to fight this creature was close combat, which it most obviously excelled at.

Karin despised this creature with all her being, but knew she would have to place that anger away to win this fight.

This was the beast that had slain her daughter and countless other people without a second thought. This was the beast that had just laid waste to an entire army in its lonesome, a feat that she thought only she and a select few others in the entire world were capable of. And it had done so without magic, something no creature, no matter how strong or vicious should be capable of doing. She knew that based on her observations; direct confrontation would be completely hopeless in the face of such a creature.

So she wouldn't fight it directly.

Karin took flight, which the skulltaker was expecting.

With a reaction time expertly honed with an eternity of dueling, and strength gained from progressive favoring by khorne, the daemon hurled his blade at the manticore. The hellblade was sharp enough that simply dropping it into the ground would make it slice through the earth until the pommel hit the ground. The skulltaker didn't need to make a perfect throw. All he had to do was make contact with flying mutated creature's body, and the hellblade would do the rest of the damage on its own.

Karin was surprised as a sword larger than she was, speared into the hind leg of her manticore. The blade sliced clean through, cutting through the muscle and bone as if it wasn't even there to begin with. Karin's mount cried out in pain as its leg was sheared of. It lost focus of flying and came crashing back to the ground.

Directly before the skulltaker.

Karin quickly rolled away from her mount, just before the juggernaut stomped down on the manticore with a might hoof. The sound of cracking and splintering bones echoed through the sky as her manticore was crushed underfoot. The juggernaut glowered down at the inferior mount with what she swore was satisfaction in its glowing red eyes. The juggernaut immensely enjoyed stomping that thing into the ground. The skulltaker reined his mount back with a tug of the chain and refocused it back on the intended target.

_Her._

As the beast took its first steps forward, Karin quickly fired a powerful tornado into the ground before her, using an expertly fashioned sword. The juggernaut was forced to halt its movement and brace its legs as powerful winds made it struggle to keep balance. Taking advantage of her enemy's immobility, she used a gust of wind to push herself back.

Irritated, the skulltaker hoped off his mount's back. The tornado did little to him due to his blessing from khorne, which made him immune to magic based attacks. Temporarily ignoring the witch, the khornate herald phased over to his sword and picked it up from the ground. He could've just as easily phased over to the woman and killed her with his bare hands, but the skulltaker had never killed someone without at least _holding _his sword. It felt unnatural to the skulltaker, which is something you'd almost never hear a daemon say.

As the herald of Khorne turned around, he saw his mount brashly charging at the woman, who was keeping the juggernaut at bay with her most powerful magic attacks. His mount lacked the collar of khorne, meaning that against magic, its only choice was to force its way through with protective armor and brute strength. He could see the frustration building in his mounts eyes as it badly wanted to mutilate the woman before it. The skulltaker realized that he had a clear opening, but was sated of his lust for blood at the moment. He still longed for a worthy opponent, but clearly no mage could give him that challenge. He wished to see if his mount could handle the mage on its own.

The juggernaut grinded through the tornado, step by step. Karin was making sure to keep the rider itself in her peripheral vision, but she was having enough problems with just the mount. It wasn't immune to magic like its rider, but powerful enough that it could take her most powerful spells to the face and keep going. She took note that the beast was very front heavy in its body make up however. She decided to test a trick that might kill it.

She stopped powering her tornado and let the juggernaut come at her in full force.

The beast actually caused a tremor when it charged, nearly making her lose her footing. Just when the beast got within attacking range, she used a gust of wind to push herself to the side, making the juggernaut run straight past her. She fired another tornado into its hind legs. The juggernaut was completely unprepared for such a trick, as its back legs left the ground. The daemonic mount flipped over onto its back, tumbling to the ground.

The juggernaut's angry roar was felt from miles away.

Before Karin could even smirk in victory, the skulltaker phased directly in front of her. She moved to fire a spell as a reaction, but the skulltaker was faster. He loped off her arm with the sword in it, making it uselessly fall to the ground. Karin had only just begun screaming when her other arm was amputated in a similar manner. Following that, her legs were cut off.

She passed out from the pain.

The skulltaker placed his free hand on her forehead and ushered the 8 words of sacrifice. Warpfire engulfed the dis-limbed body of Karin, burning away her armor, flesh, and inner organs until only a skeletal head and torso remained. She should've been grateful that she wasn't awake to feel it, for it was a very painful process. With a twist, the skull separated from the rest of the skeleton.

She may not have realized it, but she had achieved quite the honor. The skulltaker reserved such rituals for only skilled warriors. The fact that she had managed to flip over a raging juggernaut had managed to both impress and amuse the khornate enough to gift her with Khorne's warrior rites.

His mount stalked up behind the skulltaker, infuriated that it wouldn't be the one to kill the mage for such an embarrassment. However, it respected the skulltaker and didn't dare challenge his authority. It stood behind him, glaring at the skull as its master fastened it to a hook on his cloak. Eventually it would be brought before khorne, along with the other skulls he had collected, and it would decorate khorne's throne room as a skull of a defeated but worthy opponent.

The skulltaker shattered the summoning shackles holding him to this dimension with ease.

Both he and his mount began to fade away into nothingness, leaving a legacy of death and suffering in their wake. Before they fully disappeared however, the juggernaut stomped on the remains of Karin's skeleton with a single hoof, turning the bones to powder beneath its foot.

Petty revenge was better than none at all.

xxXxx

Author's Note: Hey I think I'm getting better at this. Anyway, leave reviews, or better yet, any anime you wish to see get the skulltaker treatment. Right now I have inuyasha and Fate/Stay Night in my sights, but I wouldn't mind more being added to the list. If you do have a recommended fic, leave a description, a Wikipedia link, or something for me to know what it's all about.

PEACE!-...Er..wait…I mean.. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!


	3. Tail of Two heralds

**Author's note:** Well sorry for the delay.

Next for the chopping block is Code Geass. It's an anime full of assholes, where one 'good' asshole joins a rebellion to be pains in the neck of the oppressive asshole country that is Britannia. When that asshole systematically kills off all the competition to the throne, he becomes the new asshole king. He then reaches a level of assholeness that makes the entire world hate his guts, far more than they hated his asshole father (how that was possible, I don't know). Then he arranges for one of his asshole friends to kill him so that the world will stop being such assholes toward each other, proving he isn't AS big an asshole as you were led to believe. Too bad he died with only like…3 people knowing how much he sacrificed for a bunch of assholes.

That's the short, vulgar version of the story.

The long version is much more convoluted, stuffed with subplots, filled with statements and symbolisms that are offensive to monotheistic religions, and filled with the most staggeringly high amount of suicide cases since that spiked punch incident with the 'People's Church' a few years ago, involving a false prophet.

I could go into a rant about just how badly I wish everyone in that series to die. I could go into a rant about just how badly I want these people to be struck by a disaster, AFTER they spontaneously undertook a transformation from loyal NWA (National Weapons Association) members to sickeningly peaceful super hippies.

But a rant wouldn't satisfy that desire. No.

I need to personally throw at them, creatures from another sci-fi series that would chew their entire planet up in days and spit it out.

So here is my frustration in this series, put into imagination.

xxXxx

**Tail of Two heralds**

Khorne was displeased.

The blood god was HIGHLY displeased.

Khorne had born witness to a world that had once greatly entertain him, turn into a sickening sight. He watched as the tyrannical, power hungry, leaders that he influenced were cast aside. And not at all in a pleasing manner. They weren't assassinated, murdered for the world to see, or crushed by a stronger ruler.

They were uprooted.

By warp-damned _children! _One of them that had simple mind control powers was the main cause of this outrage!

He had figured out that if the world's hatred was focused on one sole person, then he would be able to dispel that hatred by sacrificing himself.

What Khorne despised the most was that such a simple maneuver, such a simple yet flawed logic of thinking had actually worked! Those people that once fed him from a silver platter with their hatred, fury, and bloodshed, had now become pathetic! They no longer maintained their weapons of war, illegalized public executions, and even dropped so low in their level of hatred that they almost rivaled warp damned equestrians that were 3 dimensions over (who the blood god was still plotting how he would despoil them).

This could not, and would not, be allowed to continue any longer.

If they chose that they would no longer battle each other for his amusement, than he would supply them with a new foe to face. A foe that would be many times more terrible than any of their war machines could ever hope to be.

Khorne snatched the skulltaker from his next intended target, the world of false daemons in need of correction. His executioner was startled at first, feeling the raw fury radiating from his deity. That emotion was fleeting at best, as khorne's fury soon transferred into the skulltaker's own unadulterated ire. The blood god did not bother with words, only transferring his visions and thoughts of the world that had drawn such anger from the lord of skulls.

The skulltaker readily accepted its new assignment. He was to go and despoil this world, by any means necessary. His previous orders to collect the skulls of worthy opponents were temporarily overlooked in favor of hunting down those responsible for this new 'peace', these mortals had created.

No mercy was to be shown to even the most inept fighters he encountered. Blood was blood, and much of it would need to be spilled before the blood god could truly say that he was sated of his murderous urges for the time being.

The skulltaker rode forth, promising death and despair for all of Khorne's enemies.

xxXxx

Earth was ascetic.

Just minutes ago, everyone was at peace and happily living their lives.

Then something completely impossible happened.

A single fireball was streaking down from the sky, directly toward the capital city of Britania. The people underneath were quickly evacuating, trying to get to cover, or emptying from the buildings they were in. They were in complete confusion. There had been no weather warnings, danger alerts, or any preemptive attempts to shoot the fireball down beforehand. There should have been at least _some _kind of warning of this before it actually happened.

It was like this fireball had simply come from thin air, as divine punishment.

The fireball crashed through a skyscraper in its path, blowing through the building and all the way to the other side. The building collapsed to the ground, the upper levels falling against the lower levels. The hundreds, maybe thousands of people inside the building were crushed or buried alive beneath thousands of tons in building material.

The fireball kept going, though its momentum was noticeably slowed. Its size was also nearly half of what it once was.

The ball of fire crashed into the side of another building, blowing out a large chunk of the infrastructure, as well as killing many people in that particular section of the building. The fireball seemed to have stopped, but something kept crashing through the building at a steady pace, battering and crushing everything that got in its way. It continued from the area the fireball hit, all the way through to the other side of the buildings, knocking down every wall, object and person along the way. The thing soon broke through the final wall, and actually _jumped _out and into the street that was 20 stories below.

What fell to the ground would cause thousands more people to die horrible deaths.

Something hit the concrete, feet first, causing a HUGE crater to form around it on impact. The smoke obscured the object, but to someone with an active imagination, they'd have seen the devil in a cape, riding a steel bull. Those people would be considered crazy and in need of mental help, up until the smoke cleared enough to clearly view the object that had knocked down one building and gutted another.

Something _roared _out into the sky, announcing the beginning of the apocalypse.

xxXxx

It had been several hours since the daemon landed and he was getting busy.

The skulltaker and his brass armored juggernaut carved their way through every screaming civilian and armed policeman that entered his path. The very first the skulltaker would slay would be the person who encouraged all this peace and allowed it to flourish.

Princess Nunnaly.

Just as the Khornate herald though this, a pair of police issued knightmare frames came around the street corner, being followed by police cars. They seemed to freeze up, seeing a monster of un-adulterated brutality before them. The skulltaker had no such fears to speak as it began thundering forward. The skulltaker, standing upright, was 10 ft. tall, which was just below the average knightmare's height of 12 to 15 ft. His Juggernaut was 12 feet in height and maybe 30 ft. in length.

In other words, when the skulltaker mounted his juggernaut, they woefully toward over any knightmare frame in existence.

The pair of machines opened fire with their handguns. The Juggernaut's armor laughed at the feeble weapon impacting it, and refused to even acknowledge the existence of the firearms the policemen pelted him with. The KNF's tried to hastily disengage, but the skulltaker was faster. He lurched forward on his mount and swung in a large horizontal arc, slicing through the cockpit area of one machine, while his mount impaled the other through the chest with its horn.

The policemen could only run in fear as the skulltaker trampled over them and their vehicles without any regard for who he killed along the way.

As the skulltaker continued forward, more and more of these robots started to attack him. The herald of khorne was highly irritated by these 'knightmare frames'. They reminded him of the tau, with their obsession over using armored vehicles that resembled actual people. The skulltaker routinely learned that decapitation was the best way to kill an opponent, but for the tau, all decapitation would do is make them lose all ability to sense their enemies. It wasn't nearly comparable to killing a living being, especially when the robots pulled countless tricks from their asses that didn't seem physically possible for machine to do.

His juggernaut had stomped a knightmare into the ground for the 80th time that day, only getting minor enjoyment when some blood leaked from the holes in the cockpit area of the armor. The helicopters that would make passes at him were but minor nuisances. The imperial bolters and heavy bolters, rounds that could blow chunks out of armored tanks, pinged off both the skulltaker's and the juggernaut's armor harmlessly. These puny bullets they fired were laughably weak in comparison. Even the air to ground missiles they had taken to firing at the Skulltaker and his mount were easily shrugged off.

The Skulltaker approached the capital building of the Britanian Empire, laughing with glee as purple robots with spears formed up to stop him. The opened fire with up-scaled assault rifles. The bullets may have been larger, but they weren't the high penetration bolters that some daemons had come to respect. If compared to any armament in the imperium, the skulltaker would compare the weapons to stub guns. Those were pitiful, even against the armorless bloodletters of khorne.

The skulltaker laughed demonically as he thundered through the hail of bullets, hellblade raised high. The britanian honor guards leveled their spears and counter-charged. The skulltaker saw this and roared in response.

"_Ye-_**YES!** _Fi-_**FIGHTING!** _Ki-_**KILLING!"**

xxXxx

Princess Nunnally was being escorted out the capital, and toward the roof, where she would be evacuated by a secret plane.

She was terrified. The news was saying that an alien had crashed into the city, riding a mecha, and wearing advanced armor. It was carving and battering its way through every response force they sent, and finally engaged the Princesses own personal knightmares.

Soldiers were running in all directions, clearing a path for her while they did their best to cover her escape. Barricades were being set up on the main door, as well as the handful of knightmares they could get to support them. She watched her soldiers move with a sense of sadness.

She had wanted to try and talk with it, maybe see _why _this alien was so angry with them.

Surely she could negotiate peace with this creature?

xxXxx

The skulltaker was blocking and parrying jabs from spears from the top of his juggernaut. He pursued a brief opening in one purple armored knightmare, and jammed his sword hilt deep into the cockpit. He laughed as he felt the pilot being impaled by the tip of his hellblade.

A knightmare was impaled through the chest of his juggernaut's horn. The beast itself was furiously shaking its head to dislodge the machine. In its flailing, it banged into the side of a knightmare, knocking it to the ground. The juggernaut caught this in its peripheral and stomped on the machine before it could get back up. Not knowing that the pilot was already crushed, the juggernaut repeatedly stomped until the knightmare's head and chest area were caved in.

The skulltaker made his mount stop, as it was messing with his own ability to keep balanced and still fight. With a mighty sword stroke, the skulltaker cleaved through a knightmare from shoulder to hip. The cockpit shot out, but it was clearly cut halfway through by the skulltaker. The khornate herald wasn't entirely sure that meant it was a kill, but disregarded it. He had more important things to worry about.

The skulltaker reined his mount in, and ordered it to charge through the palace doors. The beast growled and braced its legs, before lurching forward like a battering ram.

xxXxx

The soldiers screamed and jumped in surprise when something slammed into the door, causing most of their barricades to fall away from the door. A giant bloodstained horn, larger than a man, was sticking out. The soldiers took this as their cue to get ready. They leveled their rifles at the door, prepared for the worst but praying for the best. The same creature slammed into the door two more times, easing it farther open every time.

Then something odd happened.

A giant, flaming, black sword with jagged edges slashed repeatedly through the door, making chunks fall out. The blade finally made one large vertical slash through the door before retracting.

The soldiers tensed, hearing gunfire and explosives on the other side of the door.

The doors where smashed apart, chunks of it flying across the room. The skulltaker stood tall on the shoulder of his juggernaut, gripping its chain tightly. There was a pause as everyone stared at the creature. It was larger than a knightmare! The Juggernaut lurched forward, intent on killing everything in its path.

The soldiers opened fire.

xxXxx

Nunnally tensed as she heard her soldiers firing.

The sound of her palace doors being unhinged led her to believe the alien had successfully cut his way through all resistance.

Cornelia, as well as a few of the britanian knights in her honor guard, stood guard around her escape vessel. It was a modified dropship that would transport her to a secret bunker. There, she would wait, until the britanian army delt with this new monstrosity.

Something smashed through the walls behind her.

She turned around, and nearly had a heart attack at what she saw.

It was like viewing some comic book depiction of the devil. The alien (though she though _daemon _would be a more prudent term), was colossal in size. It was almost as tall as a knightmare, with 4 horns and an elongated head. It was also wearing a scarily large amount of skulls as decoration. Each and every one of those skulls looked suspiciously human to her, and made her question if that beast had taken all those along the way here. She also wasn't certain whether or not that creature was riding a really life like machine or a cybernetic alien animal. Its entire body was armor plated and fully of machinery, but its eyes and teeth were too vicious looking to possibly be fabricated.

Before she could wonder more, the skulltaker looked directly at _her_.

"_Cha-_**CHAOS!** _Ha-_**HAS** _Co-_C**OME** _fo-_**FOR** _Yo-_**YOU!"**

Princess Nunnally's personal guardian hurriedly wheel chaired her into the vessel, as the pilot began prepping the vehicle for flight.

The skulltaker wouldn't allow her to escape, and began thundering toward her. He was intercepted when three more honor guards smashing into his juggernaut. The skulltaker _did _notice that one of those machines looked different from the others. With that thought, he decapitated one of the nearby machines, causing the pilot to eject. The skulltaker swung in the other direction to behead the other machine, but was blocked by its spear. The most decorative of the honor guard tried to run him through, but the attack was easily parried by the juggernaut bucking its horn up.

The skulltaker noticed the flying machine lifting off, and furiously began hacking away at the two remaining knightmares while his juggernaut did its best to impale the two machines. The skulltaker managed to slash the vehicle enough to force it to eject as well, but this last one proved to be a challenge.

Normally, the skulltaker loved challenges.

However, he couldn't enjoy that challenge because he was trying to down the machine and kill the girl before she could escape. She had earned khorne's ire, and wouldn't be allowed to escape under any circumstances.

The skulltaker ordered his juggernaut to smash through the machine, and toward the hovering plane. The juggernaut made a jab at Cornelia with its horn, knocking her away, before continuing on. The vessel began lifting off and into the sky. The Juggernaut jumped, giving the skulltaker the height needed to slash, and potentially down the vessel.

The skulltaker slashed at the plane with his sword, but only managed to cut through the side and through a few chairs. The vessel took off, sporting a gash on its side. The skulltaker roared in fury, his juggernaut picking up on his displeasure and echoing its master. The khornate daemon's fury didn't come from the fact that the mortal had survived his first attempt. He would find her no matter where she went. He was angered that now he'd have to run her down, khorne knows how far and kill her before she can escape on another vessel.

"Ha ha ha ha! You failed _abomination_. I will not let you harm my little sister and the new ruler of Britania."

The skulltaker whipped his head toward the source of the voice, growling at the remaining knightmare, which was wearing a purple cape.

Princess Cornelia.

"_Whe-_**WHELP."**

The skulltaker turned toward her, ready to give this one a proper execution.

_**BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!**_

Both the knightmare's and the skulltaker's heads whipped to the sky.

The vessel that Nunnally had used to escape escaped in was streaking to the ground, its entire rear end blown off. The skulltaker watched as pink lightning struck the vessel and caused it to explode magnificently to pieces.

"PRINCESS NUNNALLY!" Cornelia screamed, extending her hand to the sky, as if that would help her, now dead, little sister.

Blue lightning streaked from the air, striking Cornelia's knightmare and blowing out the machine's entire chest cavity. The woman that was piloting the war machine was completely obliterated.

The skulltaker stood by while all this happened, immediately realizing whose handiwork this was.

The skulltaker looked to the sky as an object approached him.

The first thing the skulltaker noticed was the round, disk that was burning with blue fire. It was almost as large as his own juggernaut, sporting numerous eyeballs that were all starring at his juggernaut with interest. His Juggernaut growled at the disk, immediately marking it as a competitor daemon mount.

That wasn't what caught the skulltaker's attention however.

What he saw before him was a pink creature with a beak and four arms, sporting a staff with a bird's skull on the end. The creature looked the skulltaker in his eyes, chirping in amusement.

The skulltaker knew of these beings all too well.

A Tzeentch herald.

Of the four chaos god, each had numerous heralds. Heralds were daemons that proved to be more powerful than their surrounding peers, but weaker than full fledge greater daemons. The skulltaker was a herald of khorne, the most powerful one at that. He was an unparalleled master of close combat.

Tzeentch heralds were an entirely different story. They specialized in magic, hurling unrelenting volleys of magical attacks. If they were mounted in disks, like this one was, than they were mobile gunships in their right. The skulltaker _**despised**_ anything affiliated with tzeentch, especially tzeentch heralds.

"_Wha-_**WHAT** _ar-_**ARE** _Yo-_**YOU** _Do-_**DOING** _He-_**HERE** _Scr-_**SCRALL** _of-_**OF** _Tze-_**TZEENTCH!"**

"_I-_**Is** _Th-_**Tha**t _Anyway_ **TO** _greet_ **A**_-a_ _fellow_ _dea_**M**_on_ **SK**_ul_**LT**_aker?"_

This was another reason he despised tzeentch heralds. Their voices constantly changed and distorted while talking, making it a challenge just to figure out what they were trying to say. The skulltaker growled at the Tzeentchian's impudence, while his juggernaut growled at the disk of tzeentch that had maintained its curious stare at the juggernaut since it first laid eyes on it.

Khornates were famous for their short, if non-existent, tempers. Tzeentcians were famous for their tendencies to be good fast talkers and deceivers. Interactions between the two, especially heralds of both, were best described as 'interesting'.

"_**V**__ery we-_**W**_ell_. Tz**EE**ntch _himself_ **H**_as_ _sent m-_**M**e _to_ a**ID** _you're_ **PR**og**R**e_sss_. _You tr_**A**_verse_ dimen**SIO**ns _yet_ y**o**u **refuse** _to_ _ca_**U**_se_ as _much_ **change** as _yo_u c_**ould**_!"

The skulltaker gave an even deeper growl. This scrall didn't truly want to help with anything. It simply wanted to further Tzentch's own personal goals as it went. The shulltaker was prepared to state that he needed no help, but the sounds of countless helicopters spoke a different story. Both daemon heralds looked to the sky, seeing countless mortals in dire need of killing, or _changing _in the case of the tzeentch herald.

"Well _shall_ **we**?" The tzeentchian asked.

The skulltaker snorted at the pink blob he hesitated to call a daemon, in favor of simply going out to eliminate the other mortals that the blood god had marked for death. If khorne wished for this annoyance to not follow him, than he'd step in and do something about it.

The herald of Tzeentch lifted off into the sky, shooting blue and pink lightning with the tip of his spear, and hurling balls of fire with his hands. His targets were all the airborne vehicles he could spot.

The herald of Khorne leapt from the roof while on top of his juggernaut, crushing the mortals who had the misfortune of being underneath him.

The two heralds and their mounts commenced with dispatching every soldier and war machine they came across, being sure to kill more than a few civilians in the process.

xxXxx

The tzeentch herald smiled in delight, though it was hardly noticeable with the beak it had.

In the process of aiding that bumbling fool "The Skulltaker" in killing those mortals, he had fulfilled the true mission tzeentch dispatched him for.

The mortal, or rather, _Im_mortal who went by CC had greatly intrigued Tzeentch. Her psyker powers were unique in that they only supplied _others _with powers. However, those powers she gave out extended past the usual limits of a psyker.

A fairly powerful psyker could manipulate the minds of dozens, maybe hundreds, with little effort. That was because their warp enhanced minds could overwhelm a lesser mind. Two powerful psykers would have to grind down the others mental defenses, while straining to maintain their own mental barriers to overpower each other's minds. The process was so long and draining, that most psykers tended to fight while waging mental warfare in hopes of either breaking the other's concentration or scoring a killing blow while they were too focused to properly fight.

This woman's 'Geass' powers bypassed that process entirely. Some powers could bypass the mental warfare process in favor of simply rewriting the intended target's brainwaves. Others could actually _freeze_ time in a set zone. There were powers that could manipulate time, but not make it stand still entirely!

The sheer uses that could come from these powers were almost mind blowing!

To think, had the herald not hand delivered her to Tzeentch himself, that khornate brute would've destroyed her and her powers.

That would've been unacceptable.

The herald of tzeentch silently trialed behind the Skulltaker and his mount, as they moved on to a new dimension. Imagine what other mystical wonders following this brute could lead him to. If all went as planned, the herald would upgrade past his disk, to a full-fledged chariot. That was the highest honor any herald could receive.

And to think, the khornate in front of him didn't ride his own chariot because it killed his enemies too easily. He was content to leave it in his personal lair. The sheer idiocy of a khornate was mind boggling to the tzeentch herald.

The skulltkaer looked over his shoulder at the tzeentch herald.

For some odd reason, he had the stronger than usual urge to cleave the tzeentchian in two. He stopped himself when he remembered his past experiences with Tzeentch daemons. Tzeentch pink horrors split into 2 blue horrors when cut in half. He wasn't sure if this applied to heralds as well, but if one gibbering tzeentchian herald was irritating, than two smaller gibbering heralds would be suicide worthy.

xxXxx

**Author's note:** I damn near fell asleep proof reading this before posting it up

Football practice is now 8 in the morning, which is horrible if you've gotten used to staying up late, and sleeping in during mornings. It also doesn't help that Georgia whether is so schizophrenic. It wasn't beaming down hot enough to cook an egg on a car at 1:00. It was cloudy and raining hard outside at 3:00.

This came out a day later than I intended, but better late then never!


	4. Cleansing of Flonyard

Author's note: I'm back and ready for more!

This past week, I've been getting up at 7:00 in the morning, practicing for the coming football season, and not getting back home until roughly 7:30 or 8:00. As such, the very idea of trying to write a chapter within the scant few hours of free time I'm not using for sleep was nigh-impossible. And now that it's over, I'm going to try and get back on the ball. To make things better, yesterday was my birthday….which is the same day we received our pads!

Anyway, here we come to the long anticipated 'Dog Days' chapter.

This show is about one of those ultimate wipeout contestants being snatched out of his world and dumped into a wishy washy mid-evil setting. My gripes with this anime are few, but large.

First off, what they call war is similar to paintball in some ways (which is a sport I actually love, but have a hard time maintaining do to 'funding issues'). Due to some magic placed by a being those people may or may not consider to be a god, anyone killed within a certain patch of land turns into a plushy like toy (or 'creature ball' as it were called) until they can 'respawn' per say. This is actually an interesting idea that I liked, until the soldiers started treating it like it was an _actual_ war. Then it started going downhill for me.

Second is how inconsistent the whole setting is. At one point I see the old run down, dirt road villages you'd expect to see in mid-evil times, then the very next setting would be an over-the-top stage, even better than the ones we use in major concerts and award shows. They're so schizophrenic in the tech levels they show that I can't peg down what time period they're all supposed to be in, and whether or not they should've all had guns by this time. They seem to just be everywhere at once, and for an anime, that's never a good thing. There was literally a point where they go from a giant sword melee to seeing people arming mortars and loading rifles behind sandbags.

Truth be told, the overall problem I have is that this anime has no REAL villain.

The seemingly evil queen of the cat people turns out to be a dear childhood friend of the protagonist's love interest. It turns out that everything she's done thus far has been an attempt to save the pink haired chick, as well as the protagonist from dying by a mysterious force. The queen's little brother kidnaps the queen, leading you to think that this was a giant twist and HE's the big villain. Whoops, nope. He's just the stereotypical little brother, who can be easily bullied by the big sister. A story without an enemy isn't really a plot, just a problem that everyone is going about solving in the most dragged out and illogical way possible. The cat queen never once gets the idea to simply _tell_ everyone that she had a vision of the dog queen and the summoned 'hero' dying, and that they should help her try to prevent that from happening. Instead, she damn near wages a full fledge invasion to get the dog people's valuable weapons, so that she can use them to change the future. The queen of the dog people even flat out tells the cat queen she would've given her those weapons if she just asked for it. There's some evil demon thing that shows up in the last few episodes, but it's more just a wild animal than an actual villain. Turns out that it was that mysterious thing that would kill the protagonist and pink haired chick, but it gets defeated anyway over the course of two episodes, so I'm forced to wonder what the big deal was.

To show you just how peaceful this world is, when the townspeople find out that the queen's been kidnapped, just as she's preparing for her live concert, everyone sorta just shrugs it off. One lady is quoted saying to her children "The hero and the soldiers are working really hard to get the queen back. We'll have to hope they can get her back to the show in time." Apparently no one is worried that she might be hurt or something, just that this is an extension to that friendly tournament they were having earlier.

I find this disappointing because they have a shitload of soldiers, special divisions, and weapons. Why? They don't _do_ anything with any of it except wage more of their war games, which is mostly filled with what you'd call 'local militia' anyway, so why bother with soldiers? They said earlier that the reason they all migrated to this land where everyone 'respawns' was because there were a lot of monsters running around outside the land, and that they could eat a man alive. They could've used that as an interesting plot! Monsters are starting to migrate in, and they need to actually use those dust collecting militaries to boot them out before they overrun the place. But no, that wouldn't be cute or 'funny' to watch at all (*sarcastic voice*).

They're in dire need of a **real** bad guy.

The skulltaker is in need of more blood and skulls.

Let's see how the two interact, shall we?

xxXxx

**Cleansing of Flonyard**

Khorne may have been the 'Blood God', but his jurisdiction extended over many more subjects than simple body fluids.

The Blood God lorded over war, combat, anger, hatred, and any other things that could possibly come from a battle field. Blood was as common as water in a heated battlefield. Skulls were favored trophies taken by mighty warriors from the enemies they slew in combat. Hatred was the chief emotion felt by soldiers in the midst of combat with sworn enemies.

These aspects made Khorne who he was.

Every species had a different name for war, as well as different ways of fighting it, based on the species' physical and/or mental abilities. However, Bloodshed, Hatred, and Skulls remained a constant in war, no matter how any species fought it, or how well they advanced in doing it. It was because of this that Khorne's domain ran slick with blood of the slain throughout the galaxy. It was because of this that Khorne sat upon a throne of skulls from slain warriors. It was because of this that Khorne, as well as his daemons, were never truly 'happy', just on varying levels of anger.

At this point in time, Khorne, the Lord of Skulls, was absolutely **FURIOUS**.

Now as the chaos god most closely affiliated with war and combat out of the other four, he had held a certain expectation for warfare in general. No matter how nonsensical or idiotic fighting became, if in the end someone lay dead at the feet of his killer, than khorne was willing to accept it as an offering. Blood was blood, and anger was anger. It was pointless to try and specify the manner in which one went about it, as warfare constantly evolved and changed. He himself had noticed that he was forced to make 'additions' to his force of daemons, just so that his forces wouldn't be repeatedly crushed by certain enemies. He disliked it at first, but accepted it none the less. On occasion, he would find that some of these 'newer' methods of warfare were quite enjoyable, like hand held weapons that burned their enemies to death in close range. However, some things were also quite cowardly in his opinion, like 'aircraft'.

The eldest chaos god had seen many weird and unusual ways that other people waged war.

This however, was totally **un**acceptable!

Khorne had always noticed that there was some far off world feeding him tiny scraps of anger and bloodshed, but not nearly enough for the numerous times battles took place there. Khorne was tempted to investigate this occurrence, but was repeatedly prolonged by rather interesting wars that would take place in the materium. The first war of Armageddon, The 13 different black crusades, the skulltaker's campaign against the grey knights, so many battles of beauty were unfolding that he hardly had time to notice that one annoying blip on his metaphorical radar.

It happened to be on a slow day, with only a few thousand minor wars being waged, that he decided to finally look into that one little annoyance that had surfaced.

It took quite a bit to appall a being named 'The Blood God', but this atrocity he laid eyes on had succeeded.

Khorne looked upon a world lush with peace and prosperity. He watched as men and women exchanged blows, using enchanted sections of the earth to stave off death in battle. As if that wasn't a blatant slap in the face to the blood god, they had events where they would arm men and woman of different countries to fight each other, using swords, cannons, obstacles, and magic to try and overcome each other. They called these events; wars.

Khorne roared in unholy fury, his bellow resonating throughout the warp.

Those fools…. Those weaklings…. Those COWARDS would dare mock his existence so blatantly? They dare call this mockery, war? Khorne felt anger on level with the day he was attacked by Skar'Brand. That was the day that one of his favored bloodthirsters had the nerve to take a swing at him while his attention was elsewhere. The blow made a tiny chink in his armor, but that in itself was enough to infuriate the blood god to dangerous levels. Truly these beings should be honored. Their impudence managed to irk Khorne literally as much as a failed assassination attempt by his own creation. Truly, they must be unmatched in their skills of irritation.

This world needed to burn.

Khorne fully planned to send an army of his daemons to raze the entire planet to the ground, but he wanted to be a tad more gradual about it. Despite their weakness and blatant disregard for how real war should be fought, they still had a handful of decent warriors. When Khorne said 'decent', he meant capable of actually surviving a pitched battle with a bloodletter for longer than a few seconds. He wanted their skulls, just as he wanted the skulls of any decent warrior. The best option was to send a herald to collect those skulls before the full daemon host came to obliterate the entire planet.

This was the perfect job for U'zuhl, or as he was more commonly known as, the Skulltaker.

xxXxx

The skulltaker exited the warp rift, riding atop his loyal brass juggernaut, Ro'hos.

The daemon herald and his mount took in the world before them and immediately frowned. They saw dozens, maybe hundreds of floating islands connected by bridges, all of which eventually led to the ground itself. Everything was so lush with greenery and bright colors that the daemon found himself slightly relaxing, despite his best efforts not to.

The next thing he noticed were pink explosions filling the sky.

After an eternity of warfare, the khornate herald associated anything that caused a large colorful blast to be extremely dangerous. He was curious as to why they all seemed to be harmlessly discharging into the air, and not smashing into the lines of tightly packed soldiers, or blasting airborne enemies out the sky.

Treading over to the edge of a cliff, he looked upon a sight that interested and afterward, immediately disgusted him.

He looked upon a gate that was being hotly contested by two warring armies. From this distance, they seemed to all be humans wearing absolutely no body armor, which was unheard of to the skulltaker. Mortal warriors, especially human warriors, always wore armor so that if they failed to stop a blow or avoid a ranged weapon, their armor would save them. These infantry men seemed to have no such armor, nor any care of being without them. They fought with battle cries on their lips, and strange valor, but the daemon immediately noticed one thing that was off.

There was no blood.

He picked out a pair of men fighting and zeroed in on their duel, ignoring everyone else in the large melee. The Skulltaker watched as they exchanged blows clumsily but intensely, until one of the two finally faltered. A single sword stroke got through and made contact with his enemies' chest. The Skulltaker snarled in fury as he watched the defeated warrior burst into smoke. In that persons place was a small ball like object with a tail. The victories warrior, rather than being surprised at this turn of events, cried out victory before running off to engage another opponent.

The herald of Khorne was disgusted by what he saw.

It seemed that Khorne's words were true. There really did exist a world that mocked everything that Khorne stood for, and by extension all khornate daemons. To them, war was a friendly game of enjoyment and recreation. The herald of Khorne was only too happy to show them the **true** meaning of war.

Gripping the chains on his juggernaut's collar, the Skulltaker ordered his mount forward to battle. This entire world was a massive affront to the blood god, and they owed him a proper sacrifice of skulls. The herald of khorne had made a mental list of all the worthwhile fighters on this world, and filed away their information. The only good thing about this entire damnable battle below him was that nearly all of the worthwhile opponents were already present and currently in 'combat' somewhere.

At the very least, this would make his job all the more easier.

Leo, Cinque, Yuri Panettone, Gaul, Godwin, D'Arquien, Bernard, Laurent, and Éclair.

The skulltaker was to duel, and ultimately take the skulls of each of these individuals. They were supposedly the best warriors this world could produce, which to the Skulltaker wasn't much of an accomplishment. Apparently a human child had entered the ranks of the best warriors simply by acquiring the magical abilities they possessed, which led him to question their capability in close combat. Their magic would be null and void, which he had little doubt would make their skills on par with an imperial guard sergeant… if he was being generous.

As the skulltaker closed in on the battle, he couldn't help but wonder what the point if him being here was. Sure, he was supposed to collect the skulls of worthy opponents, but these opponents couldn't possibly be skilled! All their combative worth came from the fact that they had magic, which was something only a coward would use. Therefore, every person on this miserable planet was a coward waiting to be gutted. None of their skulls were worth the dirt on his feet. He only made an exception for the pink haired mage from that one world because she managed to entertain him to a degree, not because she was actually a worthy opponent.

As he finally came within an acceptable range, he placed away his mental ramblings.

It was time to gift these cowards with what they had been avoiding for far too long.

Bloodshed.

xxXxx

Today was another friendly battle in the world Flonyard.

Biscotti and Galette were engaged in a battle of attrition, hurling all their numbers and weapons at each other until the immediate enemies nearby were all defeated. Both sides fought fiercely, thoroughly enjoying themselves as they battled each other.

Calvary men and women, riding ostrich like creatures, assaulted entrenched positions at high speed. Archers and artillery rained down upon their enemies, hurling soldiers through the air like rag dolls. A select few of Galette's men, armed with rifles, sniped at Biscotti's men with respectable accuracy.

The battle was in full swing, with the commentators hyping it up as much as they possibly could.

It seemed to be a very enjoyable event…until something odd was spotted.

A commentator spotted an unusual creature approaching.

It appeared that some sort of monster in a cape of skulls had appeared on the far edge of the battlefield, riding on top of an iron bull. The second it was within camera range, every cameraman turned to get a close up of this new creature. Every single broadcasting TV in the kingdom's of Biscotti and Galette were filled with the image of this horrendous beast.

The entire battlefield seemed to slowly die down as everyone looked upon this beast.

It was a creature born of one's deepest and darkest nightmares. The creature was a red skinned monster clad in plates of armor and wearing a cloak of skulls. In its hand was a jagged black blade that burned with unholy fire. Its mount was almost disheartening to look upon. It was a monster of steel that showed no organic parts, but the fury in its red eyes, and bloodstained teeth more than proved that it was a living, breathing creature. Both of the figures were adorned in skulls, skull imagery, and mysterious runes that were vaguely similar to a boxy '8'.

This creature may not have done anything wrong, but its appearance said the entire story.

It certainly wasn't a friendly beast.

The battle was canceled, and its soldiers called back. Until this outside threat was dealt with, everyone was to vacate the area. Men and women disengaged from each other as the announcement was made on the intercom. This battlefield was no longer safe.

There were no identifiable ears on monster, both sides of its head being covered in 4 gigantic horns, but it seemed to have heard and understood the announcement. Both the colossal sized beast and its even larger mount reared their head backs, exposing viciously sharp canines.

"_Roo-_**ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!**"

The earth shook at the intensity of the pair's bellow. They sped up, every foot fall leaving tiny craters imprinted into the dirt. The monster's black sword was raised high in the sky, burning furiously with warp fire while the edges glowed. The blade seemed to be cutting the air itself as it went, leaving a slight after image despite the fact that it was simply being held up in the air. It was unclear what effects the blade may have, but many suspected that getting cut with it wouldn't lead to simply turning into creature ball.

You'd simply be killed.

xxXxx

Dane D'Arquien and Panettone sprinted forward at the intruder.

The pair of ninja women were all too familiar with what they saw. It was a demon, they were certain, but the oddest one they had ever seen. Demons tended to look like horribly twisted parodies of normal animals, which possessed an unquenchable thirst for destruction. These demons would annihilate entire countries, kill 'gods', and carry out a slew of other unspeakable horrors for their own selfish gain. As they charged at the creature, it took immediate notice.

It did something unexpected however.

It halted its mount, raining back on the chains. The bull seemed to stumble as it tried to halt its momentum. Slowly it came to a stop, but it was clearly confused by its master's order. The Skulltaker hoped off the brass juggernaut, ordering it to stay put unless told otherwise. The daemonic mount begrudgingly accepted its orders, but being a khornate daemon, it still longed for battle. Being ordered to simply observe one was deeply insulting, and also humiliating. Had Skulltaker not been who he was, or any other khornate herald, the juggernaut would've surely attacked him.

The two ninjas halted their movement, staring down the demon warily.

The Skulltaker glared back, eyes beaming with hatred. He recognized both of them as enemies he was ordered to kill.

"_Sku-_**SKULLS **_Fo-_**FOR** _Th-_**THE** _Sku-_**SKULL** _Thr-_**THRONE!**"

Both women were shocked to hear the demon speak. Before they could formulate a response, the Skulltaker rushed forward. Yuri let out a shriek of surprise before leaping backward, barely avoiding decapitation. D'Arquien took a swing at his back with her sword, but the blow was easily parried by an underhand sword stroke by the skulltaker. Yuri Panettone hurled a trio of throwing knives at the skulltaker's chest while D'Arquien had locked blades with it.

The beast surprised them both when it swatted the blades out the sky with its free hand, as if the throwing knives were nothing but irritating flies.

D'Arquien regained her wits and tried to stab the daemon through the chest with her large sword. The Skulltaker parried away the attack again with his own sword before driving his fist into the woman's gut, launching her into the sky. Yuri came up behind the khornate herald with her blades poised to stab the daemon in the back.

The skulltaker lashed out with a reverse elbow from his free arm, catching her in the jaw.

_CRACK!_

Yuri made a chocked screaming noise as she went down, her jaw broken from the attack. The skulltaker twisted around and made a horizontal swing at the grounded woman. Yuri was still too dazed from the surprise broken jaw to even realize she had been attacked. The hellblade sliced through both her and the ground below her at the knees, parting the woman from her legs. Blood splattered across the ground. She cried out in pain, screaming till her lungs gave out. The Skulltaker sliced two more times, removing both her arms as well. She had fainted from the intense pain.

The Skulltaker wrapped a hand around her head, lifting her off the ground. He spoke 8 words in some odd language that no mortal was meant to hear. Warpfire enveloped her body, burning away all her clothing, skin, and insides until only the skeleton itself remained. With a twist of his wrist the skull was pried free from the skeletal remains.

"_Wh-_**WHO **_Ne-_**NEXT **_Aw____-_**AWAITS** _My-_**MY** _Atte-_**ATTENSIONS?**"

"YURI! NO!"

The Skulltaker looked up to the sky. As he looked up, he saw the woman he punched earlier was still airborne, but seemingly floated in the sky as she prepared some sort of over the top magical attack. He simply stood there, waiting for her to come back down.

D'Arquien swung down her sword, unleashing a beam of pure magical energy at the Skulltaker. The beam struck dead center, detonating and rocking the ground with the explosion. She descended to the ground in a controlled fall as dust obscured all vision.

She assumed her attack had destroyed her enemy, seeing as it didn't move to even place its sword in the way.

"_Pa-_**PATHETIC.**"

D'Arquien's eyes bugged out her head as she spun around and tried to jump back. Before she could get higher than a few inches off the ground, a large clawed hand swatted her back down into the ground, striking her square in the chest. She struck the ground hard enough to displace the earth around her. The Skulltaker made a fully extended underhand swing. For a normal swordsman, this would've been foolish as the blade would've bounced off the ground or got stuck in it. The Skulltaker wasn't normal by any definition. His hellblade cut through the dirt beneath him and continued through Dame D'Arquien herself, removing her legs from the rest of her body. She was helpless as the Skulltaker repeated what he did with Yuri to her. He relieved her of her arms and burned away all but her bare skeleton. He pried away her skull to add to his collection.

The Skulltaker was one of the oldest daemons in existence, and had spent every day since then, dueling and defeating worthy opponents, be them mortals, other daemons, or fellow Khornate daemons. As such, he was used to adapting to all manner of different enemies. Fast enemies that tried to evade and pick away at him like Slaanesh daemons and Eldar were hardly difficult. They were often very weak, and easily floored by some of his weaker blows. He long ago learned that the best way to deal with them was to daze them with a 'light' strike like a punch, or in this case, a swat. When they were dazed, they wouldn't be able to dodge his next attack. A single sword stroke usually ended most duels such as that, then and there.

He was disappointed, but his opinion of them rose slightly. They each put up about as much of a fight as an elder exarch. He had killed countless numbers of those in his time, and while they weren't particularly hard, they weren't exactly easy enemies to deal with either. Had those magic boosting powers of theirs actually been effective, he may have actually had trouble dealing with them, if at all.

The Skulltaker walked back to his mount, but stopped when he heard an odd noise.

…

Was that the screams of mortals in the distance?

He looked to the sky and spotted a TV in the sky. The khornate herald watched as all the TV's replayed his execution of the two women. When the death blows were shown, the pitch of the screaming sharply increased. These mortals were terrified at the mere sight of their best warriors going down? His slightly raised opinion sharply dropped. They were truly cowards if they were crying for their lives and he hadn't even gotten to them yet. Snorting in disgust, the Skulltaker remounted Ro'hos. His juggernaut gave a rumble of acknowledgement as it continued its tread onward.

2 down. 7 more to go.

xxXxx

"_CHAAARRRGE!_"

Hundreds of cavalry men galloped forward, wielding swords, axes, spears, and other close quarter weapons. They charged with thoughts of glory and vengeance as they charged their murderous enemy. They seemed to be an awe inspiring sight as they rode on their avian mounts, looking like proud and dedicated warriors. These were the best of the best cavalry men combined from both Biscotti and Galette, being led by Prince Gaul, Godwin, and Bernard.

A single enemy galloped forward to meet their charge.

Chains rattled, and the ground trembled as the juggernaut of Khorne wildly charged forward, quite literally breathing fire and smoke from its mouth as it moved. The Skulltaker rode on the shoulders of his mount, his blade held out to the side.

These men were the fastest response force the mortals could muster after watching two beloved friends of both countries perish in a horrible death. Trailing behind the fast cavalry would be the waves after waves of cannon fodder infantry. There may be a small handful of decent fighters scattered throughout the cannon fodder, to ensure that should a stronger enemy storm their lines, those individual's will rally their allies to stay and fight. Behind them was where the artillery, riflemen, and archers would set up, in hopes of obsolete war weapons being able to succeed where thousands of swung blades had failed.

Finally behind them, would be the true target he sought out for. The one warrior that may actually be worth the effort of killing all these men to reach was Princess Leo. He'd have her skull by the end of the day, damned be what any of these pathetic soldiers tried to do.

They were almost in striking range.

The brass juggernaut's eyes glowed a baleful red as it pushed the muscle and machinery in its legs to the limit, powering the bull for a powerful ram. The Skulltaker lacked adrenaline. It was a pheromone that only mortals had as a result of exertion or excitement. With the lack of this, chaos daemons were always focused on their tasks, no matter how frantic the situation around them got. This meant that since daemons never got tired, they were always battle ready and on full alert at any given moment.

The Skulltaker used this ability to great use as his mount smashed through the front ranks of knights.

A jagged and sharp blade swung and jabbed out, decapitating or impaling every cavalry man that attacked from the side. The giant meat cleaver on the juggernaut's head, as well as its massive armored body made it perfect for knocking these soldiers aside or outright crushing them. Ostrich-like mounts and their riders were hurled across the ground, bisected and missing limbs, as they entered the juggernaut's path. The skulltaker's blade killed these fools at a furious pace, making his movements almost blurs.

Many of the cavalry fled from combat, never having seen someone actually _die _while in battle. Those that stayed were casually dispatched by errant sword swings with his hellblade. These cavalry were no challenge to deal with at all.

The skulltaker's juggernaut flinched as a blue energy claw slashed it across the shoulder, failing to leave even a scratch. Before the herald of khorne could fully turn around to face the threat, he was struck by an enchanted spear from the opposite direction. The thing bounced off the Skulltaker's armor, his blessing from Khorne nulling the effectiveness of magic based attacks.

The daemon turned and caught a descending ball of steel, with a chain attached.

The chain was linked to a man's sword, which seemed to be nothing more than a slightly stronger mortal. The Skulltaker glanced around, seeing 4 men armed with a sword/wrecking ball combo, a pair of spears, and one who chose to not use a weapon at all.

The Skulltaker charged forward on his mount, making a beeline for the most dangerous looking enemy in the group.

Godwin.

The cat man in question moved to launch his wrecking ball at the khornate daemons, but saw that the Skulltaker was still holding it in his hand! The man tried to evade but leaping away with his sword in hand. The Skulltaker yanked the wrecking ball he was holding in the opposite direction the man had jumped in, forcefully pulling him back to his spot, on the ground. The man could only yell for mercy as the armored beast stomped toward him, eyes glowing with hatred.

The Juggernaut trampled over Godwin, turning him into a fine paste.

The Skulltaker heard more pointless yelling from mortals, and turned to see the other three enemies closing in.

The khornate herald hoped off his mount, ordering it to stay put.

A pair of men in knight armor came running forward, spears poised to strike. The first one leapt high and powered their spear with some sort of yellow psychic energy. The other powered their spear with blue energy and then made a jab at the Skulltaker, who parried with an underhand sword stroke. The man made two more jabs at the daemon's unprotected calf muscle, making use of the extra reach to avoid getting up close. The man disengaged just before a yellow beam was fired at the daemon.

The man was simply covering so that his ally could get a chance to charge his attack.

Cowardly, but begrudgingly effective against an enemy that wasn't immune to magic. The daemon phased forward, bending the rules of reality to move himself closer to his targets. He backhanded the closer one with the cat ears, sending him into a nearby ditch. He cleaved down at the other target, who tried to block with his spear. The weapon was sliced down the middle. The man in question blinked and gawked in surprise, before having a fist shoved into his jaw with a resounding _crack!_

Now he remembered these two.

Bernard was one of his targets, and a Biscotti commander. This other one hadn't made his list for some reason, despite the fact they seemed to be fairly even in skill and rank. The Skulltaker chalked it up to Khorne not caring enough, to be terribly detailed.

Before he could move to finish off either of the two downed opponents, Gaul launched a trio of magical claw strikes at the daemon, tearing up the terrain nearby with its overwhelming power. The khornate herald simply walked through it, his khornate runes glowing as they dissipated the magic away from the daemon.

Gaul backed away slowly, still pelting the demon with his magical claw attacks.

It didn't make sense to him. His attacks seemed to not even affect him. It was like the monster before him regarded his magic with as much interest as rain, for all the good it did to slow him down. The Skulltaker lunged forward, his hellblade leaving a flaming vapor trail in its wake. Gaul's eyes widened as he leapt back.

The prince quickly snatched up a nearby sword on the ground. As he grabbed it he went into a barrel roll to avoid the daemon's foot stomping down on him. Gaul got up on one knee, holding his sword in one hand. The chaos daemon stood only a few feet away, inviting the Galette prince to make the first move. Gaul could only feel dread as he realized the sheer size difference between him and the daemon. The monster stood easily twice the height of Godwin, who was one of the tallest people he knew. On his knee, he looked like an infant trying to take on a grown man.

Gaul moved fast, leaping forward with his sword in hand.

The Skulltaker saw this attack coming from a mile away. Gaul expected for the daemon to raise his sword to block, move out of the way, or use its armor as a shield. Instead, the clawed foot of the daemon kicked up, catching the prince in the gut. The boy went flying into the dirt, making a crater. Undoubtedly, he would have a few broken bones from the impact.

The Skulltaker casually walked over to the Prince, and found he had been knocked unconscious.

The Khornate herald scowled. These opponents went down far too easily. If they had been space marines, they'd be up and ready for round 2, regardless of any broken bones or concussions they may have suffered. The daemon let loose a rare sigh as he went to the body of Gaul.

He spoke the 8 words of sacrifice, engulfing the prince's body in warp fire. Flesh, clothing, and innards were all burned away, leaving nothing but a skeleton. With a brutal twist and yank, he pried away the skull before moving on. He then repeated this process with the dog/man Bernard and his cat/man counterpart, who had been knocked unconscious by his earlier backhand.

That did it for the cavalry. Now he had to cut his way through the rest of this forsaken world's soldiers.

xxXxx

"FIRE MORTAR'S!"

"Archers open fire!"

"Riflemen, aim for the rider! The armor on the bull is too thick!"

The Skulltaker and his juggernaut had smashed through the enemy's lines. Men and woman soldiers alike were being sent flying, hacked apart, or trampled underfoot by the Skulltaker's rampage. The soldiers had long begun running away, realizing that this wasn't a fight they could return home from. If they were struck down, they would die! None of the local militia or the knights signed up for battle to actually put their lives on the line in _real_ warfare!

The demon was unstoppable; having devastated every elite group he came across. Biscotti's imperial knights were slaughtered to the last by the Skulltaker's flaming blade. Galette's trio of specialized woman soldiers were ran down and trampled by the daemon's mount as it smashed through every attack, defense, and obstruction in its path.

The soldiers were in full retreat, relying on the artillery units to try and cover their retreat.

The skulltaker barreled forward on his juggernaut, charging through whatever objects or screaming soldiers happened to be his path. His target was the gathering of warriors standing behind the artillery line. From his position, he could see Princess Leo, Ecclair, Cinque, and a contingent of honor guard.

His enemies were gracious enough to gather in a single place, for his convenience. He would repay them for their kindness by personally allowing those of them who wished it, single combat. He'd still kill them all, but at the very least, they'd get a chance to try and avenge their fallen. Regardless, he would have to get their first.

Arrows and high explosives rained down on the Skulltaker. The arrows and rifle shots pinged off the khornate herald's armor and horns, while his juggernaut didn't even seem to notice it was being shot at. The mortar rounds were entirely different. One had actually scored a direct hit on his juggernaut. While the explosion failed to do damage, the explosion briefly dazed the juggernaut and his rider. They were the primary weapons that the skulltaker wanted gone. His experience with fighting imperial guardsmen let him know that mortar teams tended to be bunched together in places far away from the enemy. In this instance, they were gathered right in front of the gathering of warriors he sought out.

The Skulltaker thundered forward on his mount, closing in on the line of artillery soldiers, archers, and riflemen. Their shots became increasingly faster and inaccurate as he approached. He watched as one of the mortars actually loaded a mortar and pointed it directly at the Skulltaker like some sort of improvised missile launcher.

The round smashed into his juggernaut's shoulder, dizzying his mount with concussive force of the attack.

Angered by their cowering behind ranged weapons, he ordered his juggernaut to charge at max speed. The mount thundered forward, shaking the ground as he came closer and closer. The men and woman manning the ranged weapons began panicking and backing away. Many outright turned and ran in fear for their lives.

The Juggernaut of Khorne dropped its head and smashed through the sand bags in its way, inadvertently tossing a handful of stupid soldiers who hadn't gotten out of the way. The Skulltaker began cutting down soldiers left and right, especially those who were manning the mortars. Amputated limbs, heads, and blood filled the air as the khornate daemons went on an orgy of destruction.

A devastating trio of magical attacks blindsided the Skulltaker.

A dramatic explosion erupted, turning those who weren't already slain into creature balls. This was technically considered 'friendly fire', but it was far more preferable to death by the hands of a demon.

The Skulltaker walked out of the explosion, unharmed. His juggernaut on the other hand was blasted into a crater, where it was trying to climb its way out. With his blessing from khorne, magic had no effect on him. His juggernaut on the other hand was vulnerable to magic. It was just too tough for any weapons below anti-tank level to affect.

The Skulltaker strode forward to the individuals who had fired that blast.

Approximately 15 men with knight armor and swords charged at the Skulltaker as he strode forward. They were the guards the Skulltaker had spotted earlier.

The herald of Khorne steadily walked forward, not breaking stride as he began stabbing and slashing with his hellblade in a single handed grip. The elite guards on average parried one or two of the Skulltakers sword strikes before the follow up sword stroke decapitated or disemboweled them. They tried surrounding the daemon but the Skulltaker's form was impenetrable. He could whip around to block a stab from behind, counter attack, and turn back around to face the next attacker, all without breaking stride. The last of the honor guard were cut down in a single horizontal swing, with sheared through their weapons, armor, and flesh like butter. The best soldiers both countries could muster lasted all of 30 seconds against the Skulltaker.

The daemon continued on until he finally came to his intended targets.

In front of the Skulltaker stood a trio of armed warriors.

Princess Leo glared at the Skulltaker, tears born of hatred in her eyes. This creature had murdered her brother, as well as dear friends of hers. She swore she would have vengeance for all of them, or join them in their fate. Ecclair warily stared at the Skulltaker, waiting for the inevitable attack. Cinque was shaking in fear as he stared down the demon. This beast had single handedly cut his way through, not one, but two armies who had joined together to face him. He may be known as 'the hero' but even he had to question how any of them could succeed where entire armies had failed. This creature held no apathy or regard for life, meaning that if the chance to go for a kill presented itself, then it would take it without hesitation.

"I challenge you to a duel to the death demon!" Princess Leo barked.

Ecclair and Cinque almost lost the ability to speak at such a request. They both turned to stare at her with incredulous expressions.

"What are you thinking Princess Leo! We only stand a chance if we work together!" Ecclair yelled out.

"We have to do this together Princess Leo!" Cinque yelled, trying to reason with her.

"THIS MONSTER KILLED MY BROTHER! It didn't stop there either! It killed my friends, aids, and men without a single regard for their lives! I have to avenge them!" As she yelled this, tears streamed down her face. She gripped her shield and battle axe tightly, prepared for battle. Ecclair yelled about how she lost her brother too, and the way to avenge them was together. Cinque was quick to take up the green haired woman's side.

The Skulltaker wondered if they even remembered that he was standing here. Their conversation seemed to imply that they figured he would simply stand there and watch them babble on about nothing important. He decided to interrupt their exchange the best way he knew how.

The daemon lunged forward and swung his hellblade in a large flaming arc.

The trio of warriors each brought up their own weapons to defend, as the hellblade swung in large horizontal arc. The three children were knocked backward a few feet and only barely managed to stay on their feet. Princess Leo lunged forward and smashed her axe into the Skulltaker's hellblade with all her might. The ground cracked in protest beneath their feet as the blades crossed. She followed up with a shield bash to the daemon's chest, but he caught the shield with his free hand.

The daemon lifted the woman up by the shield, which her arm was strapped to. He prepared to cut through her while she was dangled in the air by her arm. He was forced block a staff strike with his sword, and looked to see Cinque standing at his side, looking extremely hesitant. He casually pushed away the spear with his sword and turned to look at the charging Ecclair. He hurled Princess Leo at the imperial knight captain, sending both into the dirt.

Cinque went swing at the Skulltaker with his staff, but the daemon caught the weapon in his free hand and yanked it away. The human boy could only stare in woeful despair as the Skulltaker raised his hellblade high in the sky. His body felt frozen in place as the horrors of war began to take hold. The blade descended, and all the boy could do was scream.

The hero of Biscotti was struck down for all to see.

"CINQUE! NO!"

The Skulltaker turned around, and suddenly began blocking a flurry of axe and short sword attacks. Sparks flew as the enchanted weapons met the daemonic sword time after time. Princess Leo and Ecclair were hammering at the Skulltaker so fast that he actually had trouble counter attacking without making an opening. The two warrior women were furious at Cinque's death and sought to avenge him out of anger. The Skulltaker gladly welcomed the challenge.

As the blades descended for a full 30 seconds, the pair of warrior women began to tire. The Skulltaker, being a tireless daemon, never felt fatigue. In response to their increasingly sluggish attacks, he went on an offensive of his own.

Ecclair crossed her swords in front of her face to block a downward stroke from the Khornate herald. She was sent into the dirt from the strength behind the attack. Leo came up behind the demon to imbed her axe into his lower back, through his skull cloak. The daemon used the forearm armor on his free hand to block axe swing. The Skulltaker came around with other hand and made a powerful downward swing on Princess Leo, who raised her shield to block.

The shield was shattered from the impact, but managed to at least stop the daemon's attack from taking off her head.

The Skulltaker launched a surprise front kick at the woman, hitting her square in the stomach, and driving the wind out of her lungs. The daemon turned around to see Ecclair rushing again, both of her short sword poised to strike. The Skulltaker made an underhand swing at the woman. She predictably blocked, but the strength of the attack forced her arms up in the air. The Skulltaker gave her an upper cut with his free hand, driving the air out of her lungs and breaking a few ribs. She was lifted off the ground from the force of the punch, and temporarily suspended in midair.

The Skulltaker swung down with his hellbade.

_*CHOP*_

Ecclair's body hit the ground, her head following a second later.

The Skulltaker strode forward, toward Princess Leo.

The Galette Princess could only stare at the body of Ecclair, watching as her head rolled down a hill. She nearly vomited on the spot. Tearing her gaze away from the gruesome sight, she looked at the Skulltaker with absolute hatred in her eyes.

She held up her axe with both hands, throwing off the remains of her shield from her arm. She pulled all the power she had into one all or nothing attack. The ground trembled and cracked around her as she drew in all the power she could. She slowly brought up her axe, which by now was glowing with the energy she pumped into it.

This ended here and now.

The Skulltaker steadily strode forward, holding his flaming hellblade out to the side. This mortal intended to strike him down with a single attack. The daemon of Khorne intended to do the very same with his hellblade. Only the best swordsman would survive this affair.

The Khornate herald lowered his head and lunged forward, hellblade leaving a flaming after image in its wake.

The Galette princess lunged forward and swung her axe, pouring all the will power she had into that one swing.

The explosion could be seen from miles away.

xxXxx

The Skulltaker stared at the skulls he had accumulated during this little trip.

The daemon was riding across the battlefield on the back of his brass armored juggernaut. There were a couple of other warriors worthy of his time, but he was through with this world. He would leave them to put up a fight for the approaching daemon host of khorne.

The Skulltaker felt a warp rift tear open in the sky.

As he looked up, he saw several bloodthirsters fly out the warp rift on powerful wings, along with a couple dozen furies. Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers were tearing their way into reality, roaring bloody murder and praises to Khorne as they went. Khornate Soul Grinders of the Soul Forge erupted from the ground in warp portals, roaring in freedom and promising destruction. Flesh hounds nimbly sprinted out of warp rifts, hunting for mortals with hunger in their eyes and a thirst for blood. Fellow khornate heralds rode out of the warp rifts from chariots, being pulled by pairs of red armored juggernauts. These heralds ushered their brethren forward, eager to please the blood god with acts of violence and slaughter.

The Skulltaker ignored those daemons, walking by them without a care in the world.

His job here was done.

Many of the daemons he crossed gave him odd looks. The Skulltaker was legendary amongst khornate daemons, even amongst the powerful bloodthirsters. To see such a legendary figure casually walking away from a slaughter confused them. The favored herald of Khorne disregarded his underlings, and entered the warp rift.

He would let his fellow khornates have their fun, for he had business elsewhere.

These 'alternate worlds' had been infuriating Khorne since he first discovered them, and the Skulltaker was sure that by the time he arrived, Khorne would have a new world for him to go to.

The Skulltaker was beginning to miss the loyalist space marines, crafty elder, persistent orks, and even the Grey knights. At least they could reliably face him and give him a real challenge.

He had heard rumors that a grey knight grandmaster was marauding across the warp, and causing a lot of damage. Kaldor Draigo if he wasn't mistaken. He had longed to go after that man, but his obligations to attacking these alternate universes never gave him a chance to search.

The Skulltaker shrugged away the thoughts. Being immortal meant you had all the time in the world.

There was no need to rush.

xxXxx

Author's note: This is the longest chapter I have ever written…ever. 8k words.

When it came time to proof read, I almost cried at the amount of time it would take. I considered getting a Beta reader, but I think that would only make my chapters take even longer to update.

Believe it or not, when I imagined these fight scenes in my head, I actually felt no happiness watching them die. They look so cute with their fluffy little ears and unusually large eyes. Imagining a giant daemon, who carries enough skulls around to be considered a mobile fossil museum, killing them all is _almost_ depressing to think about.

By the way, for those who got confused by my constant change between spelling 'demon' and 'daemon' the two terms are completely different.

The Dog Days characters think the Skulltaker is a 'demon', or a mutated animal like creature that destroys everything for no apparent reason. 'Daemons' are creatures of the warp, who actually have conscious thought and tend to come from one of 4 chaos gods. I used 'demon' when he was being described through the eyes of a Dog Days character, and 'Daemon' when he was referring to himself.

Anyways, have a good day!


	5. Purging of the Pandora

Author note: This chapter has been in development for over a month, I was just too lazy to finish up, to busy with 'Crimes Against Humanity' to bother with it, or a combination of the two.

The new story on the chopping block is an anime that I honestly never looked too deeply into before now.

Fate/Stay Night would've been hard to do, on account the Skulltaker and Tzeentch herald wouldn't really care about being seen in public, and cause a lot of ruckus from the magi and normal humans alike (not that the 4th grail war was all that 'secretive', on account of a giant monster showing up and being attacked by military jets). I could probably do one know that I've finished the Fate/Zero series, but I've got too many other things I'm working on at the moment.

Inuyasha, I don't know nearly enough about to write a decent story for. All I remember is that the plot mainly revolves around the sacred jewel, which is like an endless supply of steroids and heroine for demons. The main character is a half-demon, with an asshole brother, dead farther, presumably dead mother, abusive girlfriend, bipolar ex-girlfriend, and a host of odd friends with even stranger problems. I used to watch it fairly often a few years ago on adult swim, before it went off air. Since then, I only remembered what I did off memory from a few years ago. I haven't mustered the desire to go revisit the series.

I want to try and avoid Mecha anime because its not as satisfying to write about the Skulltaker cutting down a giant robot as supposed to a flesh and blood creature. I had to introduce a new anime that was not so usual. All the main ones that would be vaguely practical for a pair of daemons to ransack, I've already done. The two that are left, I'm almost completely ignorant about. Then a new anime caught my attention.

Gather around kids, I have a story to tell.

One day, while watching the second season of Sekirei, I noticed another anime on the funimation site that was being showcased in the 'if you like this, than you'll probably like this!' section. It's called 'Freezing'. It was very similar to Sekirei in a sense. For whatever reason, adolescent girls have super powers and some arbitrary need to be in a relationship with adolescent males in order for them to use their powers to the fullest (which often leads to a less than professional working relationship). Like most anime of this type, one male in particular is able to completely break all the pre-set rules and limitations of their powers for some unexplained reason (which usually stays unexplained). This ability grabs the attention of multiple amazon-esque girls, who take their roles as Pandora even more seriously than most soldiers take going to a war zone. The reason they have those powers, and the full mechanics behind them, aren't made very clear. Something called 'stigmata' come up every once in a while. They give Pandoras and Limiters their powers, but you go for a long time before finding out where they even come from. The reason Pandoras and Limiters are needed is that they need them to fight some other worldly monstrosities called 'Nova'. Despite the clear purpose of their abilities, they end up fighting each other more often than not (which isn't surprising, considering these are high schoolers (who come from filthy rich families) given super powers, and bunched up in the same area for years). This sort of leads me to question if it's really a good idea to be giving hormonal teenagers deadly powers, especially while they attend what amounts to a high school. It almost seems like more of them die in schoolyard fights than in actual combat against Novas.

Oh yeah, there's also an underlying story about Maria, the very first Pandora to live. At some point between her twirling around her powers, and killing a Nova or two on her own, a religious cult dedicated to her started up. As more Pandora's started being trained and produced, that cult grew into a international religion. This, of course, leads to the person in charge of a major Pandora school being a cult Nun who goes by the name 'Sister Margaret'. It's at this point the story starts getting a bit 'iffy' for me. The people of this cult are basically Christians who see the newd chick floating in a test tub as a being who is, and I quote 'a being who is at the very least, on par with God'... If you aren't aware, that awkward silence is the sound of hundreds of Roman Catholics purchasing torches, pitchforks, and tickets to Japan.

...Sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Funnily enough, this anime is something I've gotten drawn into. Despite the fact that they have nearly all the pitfalls I usually hate about certain action anime, I still enjoy the series. People constantly take blows with their defense wide open, yet they never take more than a tiny gash with lopsidedly large amounts of blood coming out. The traditional military is a complete non-factor in their war against the 'Nova' (despite Nuclear weapons never even being brought up, except for use as comparisons). The enemies in question aren't so much 'threats to humanity' as much as they are 'otherworldly terrorists' (As Nova simply go in and kill whatever they see, then suicide bomb themselves). Finally, the Pandoras have that habit of constantly talking about morals and personal issues during fights, as if their mortal enemy is a substitute for their psychiatrist.

That's another thing I like about this anime by the way. Most 'Ecchi' anime make female fighters into unshakeable badasses, with no emotions in combat other than anger, determination, and confidence. In this anime, the characters actually feel like semi-real teenagers in an important position. You actually see them crack under combat and stress like you'd expect to see from a child being placed in the shoes of an experienced war vet. There's a legit reason most nations don't allow teenagers to serve in the army, and this anime does a good job portraying why that is. Across the series you see (hopefully intentional) examples of why impressionable youths, biological science, and military affairs should all be kept separate. One example would be Pandora using lethal weapons to liberally try to kill each other over arbitrary things like 'disrespecting the upper classmen', then getting shell shocked when people actually die in front of them.

Despite all of that, I've watched the entire anime, and read through nearly the entire manga. Maybe it has to do with the slight grittiness of the series. Unlike most anime, they don't trivialize warfare into some extreme life or death sports competition (or rather they DO, but they make sure to reign it in every once in a while). The reason the army can't really do much is because Nova are supposedly 'invulnerable' to conventional weaponry. Of course, they don't actually give you a reason why military weapons are ineffective or why they can't just modify their ammunition. They just show you a few helicopters shoot at a Nova, fail, and expect you to be satisfied with that. I should be a lot more mad at the half-assed explanation, but another person's theory that Nova armor was made of something Diamond-like calmed me down a bit. Since Pandora weapons were made of the same thing Nova armor is made of, I can accept that somewhat.

As well, Pandoras are a double edged sword, due to how they're made. Nova can corrupt Pandoras and make them into their own soldiers by manipulating their stigmata, causing further risk to fighting them. It's almost a realistic situation I could see humans being placed in, as far as the Nova attacks are concerned. Of course the whole matter of how humanity handles the Pandora/Nova situation is wasteful and impractical, but that's something I'm teaching myself to ignore when watching anime, and most fictional stories in general.

The one plot-hole I saw in it though (**SPIOLER ALERT**), were these people called 'Valkyries'. They were girls that didn't have the genetic ability to be Pandora's, given advanced tech to put them on level with Pandora. My issue isn't that they exist, but that they're still teenage girls. The entire reason Pandora were woman was because the process required to make them required a woman's DNA at a certain age, which isn't an issue for Valkyries. So now they don't have to go around getting teenage girls to go to war, and actually use conventional soldiers of acceptable age and whatever gender, yet they still insist on grabbing young girls.

I highly recommend it to watch (that is, if under-aged women's clothes magically tearing off every 30 seconds or so doesn't bother you).

Anyway, watch these warp daemons eat all the characters in that entire series alive.

xxXxx

* * *

**Purging of the Pandora**

The Skulltaker could feel it.

Khorne was displeased by something.

Knowing that either he or Karanak would be dispatched to handle this, he set off toward the Brass Citadel. He and his juggernaut marched across the fortress of Khorne, crushing the countless skulls of the slain, that made up the soil beneath their feet.

It was odd to the Skulltaker.

Even though Khorne was by far the most static of the chaos gods, even his realm was forever changing. New skulls of all species types randomly replaced the ones crushed under foot by the larger daemons and war engines, an ever flowing river of blood flowed across the realm of Khorne, occasionally tinted by the blood of something whose life fluid wasn't red. New spires of war and daemonic bastions willed themselves into existence, sprouting out of the blood soaked earth and into seemingly random places across the daemonic world of Khorne.

Skull towers, the apocalyptic battle tanks of Khorne, rolled across the dimension on their own consciousness, opening fire on anything it decided to label as an enemy, which included other Khorne daemons. A couple of Soul Grinders affiliated with Khorne were also seen stalking across the realm, itching for an enemy to battle with their new-found mechanical strength.

For once in the Skulltaker's life, this all felt nostalgic.

He'd been 'living' here his entire existence, and not once did he ever feel so uncaring while watching all of this occurring. Perhaps it had been so long since he forced his way into the materium, that he was aching for combat against mortals. As he watched a rather large host of Khornate daemons be led outside the fortress of Khorne by a mighty bloodthirster, he was almost inclined to follow. When such armies were led out, they _always_ found a battle. Seeing as Slaanesh needed a lesson in impudence almost every other second, it was likely that they would attempt to ransack to Palace of the Pleasure once again. It was equally possible that they would storm the Garden of Nurgle, or despoil the Labyrinth of Tzeentch. By the warp, it was equally likely that they were planning to attack another Khorne daemon host. After all, a day without bloodshed is a day wasted.

With that thought, he frowned.

That Tzeentch herald hadn't been present during his last scourging. While he hoped it had been killed during one of the many battles across the warp, it was every bit as likely that it was simply busy during the previous daemonic incursion. The damned scrawls did have a rather unhealthy like for learning more of their cowardly magic. So much so, that he once encountered a Tzeentch daemon pair named 'the bluescribes'. They had spent the last several hundred millennia trying to catalog all the magical spells in the world. The herald of Khorne didn't know much about magic, but he did know that there were as many different types of magic in the world as their were weapons of war. He learned of both through first hand experience, and labeled the Tzeentchians as insane for even daring it. To his knowledge, they were still at it to this very day.

Banishing away his idle thoughts, he entered Khorne's throne room. He immediately snapped his eyes to the shadows when he couldn't quickly find the whereabouts of a certain 3 headed flesh hound. There were more than a few times that the damned dog wound try to pounce on either him or his mount while unaware. While he had faith that his brass juggernaut would be able to handle itself in combat, he had suffered more than a few wounds trying to fight off the damned creature himself without killing it. Khorne would be very displeased with him if he killed the blood god's personal attack dog. He supposed if Karanak came close to killing him, the three headed attack dog would be severely punished as well, but that certainly wouldn't give him closure. Khorne being who he was, he certainly wouldn't discourage violence amongst his warriors.

He relinquished his musings when Khorne himself turned his attention toward the Skulltaker.

The Blood God didn't bother with words.

Images and thoughts filled U'zuhl's mind as the Blood God transferred his thoughts over to his creation's. The most powerful of the Khornate heralds saw images of humans with strange powers. It wasn't magic, but rather some form of advanced technology that substituted for magic. It was similar to the Necrons in a way. Aliens with even more advanced, reality defying technology ruthlessly assaulted the humans by sending simple machines to assault them in cowardly attacks. These aliens, Nova as they were called, deserved to be exterminated for fighting in such a despicable manor. Those particular humans however, had a few interesting warriors on their world. Warriors whose skulls would make excellent trophies.

The task was simple. A host of Khorne daemons were going to annihilate the Nova where they stood. Meanwhile, he would wreak his own personal slaughter upon any of those human warriors who dare step forward. He was only too happy to be sent out on another mortal reaping.

Until he was informed that Tzeentch wanted to be involved as well.

xxXxx

* * *

Over at East Genetics, radars were going haywire.

People ran left and right, typing furiously on their computers and yelling to each other in panic voices. It was a scene of controlled anarchy. Only a single thing caused these reactions from people for any reason. And these things always heralded great suffering for humanity.

A dimensional anomaly was occurring

All nearby camera's were being linked to where the dimensional rift was occurring. While this happened, people were being evacuated from the nearby city. East Genetics Academy was having its alarm raised.

The Nova were here.

xxXxx

* * *

While this occurred from the ground, a pair of fireballs streaked from the sky.

One fireball burned with pink and blue fire, with the occasional volt of pink and blue electricity streaking across the comet's surface. The other burned with pure red fire, While this in itself wasn't too weird, the smoke it left behind seemingly reshaped into skull faced imagery of their own accord , as if the smoke was made up of the souls of the damned. The pair of fireballs streaked down to earth, side by side. To an outside observer, it would appear as if two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse were descending to earth, ready to bring about war, famine, pestilence, and death.

To these particular daemons in question however, they would only aim for war and death.

With the appearance of 4 S-class Nova, the threat that two tiny comets presented was almost laughable. However, as the comets descended to the earth, something unusual happened. Both of the comets redirected their flight path of their own accord and streaked straight toward the group of Nova's. The alien structures could only manage to look at the comets in seeming surprise before impact was made. The four Nova in question were demolished by the surprise collision, and laid low. They never rose again.

A stunned silence followed.

Everyone simply watch as what they swore was divine intervention occurred. Streaking fire sent from the heavens had come forth to destroy those that would threaten the creations of God. Evil had been destroyed for the world to see, as proof. There was unquestionably a greater being watching over them, who wound protect them from any other creatures from beyond.

Unfortuneatley for all involved, they had the identity of their savior horribly mistaken.

xxXxx

* * *

The Skulltaker stood on the back of his Juggernaut, staring down at the remains of this 'Nova' with distaste.

The idea of creating a war machine was completely accepted. Khorne himself had more than a few titans and 'super-heavy' battle tanks under his command. What was cowardly was that the builders weren't using these machines as support for a strong advance, or to counter enemy war machines, but to ship them off into this dimension and have them cause as much damage as possible. It would at least be acceptable if these machines were being piloted by living beings. At least then, it could be said that war machines were simply powerful weapons in the hands of a warrior. The Nova didn't even do that. They simply threw automatons at their enemy until they submitted. This wasn't warfare This was simply hiding from your enemy while you manufactured something to fight for you. Such a craven tactic was-

"_**Bri**__l_li_a__nt_"

The Khornate herald looked to his left and saw the one creature he currently hated more than all else. A Tzeentch herald. To be more accurate, _the_ Tzeentch herald.

The freakish, four-armed, pink skinned, staff wielding daemon was standing upon his disk of Tzeentch, studying the battered remains of one of the Nova. He levitated a piece into the air with his telekinesis in order to study it more closely.

The Skulltaker growled at the fickleness of his, how he hated to say it, 'partner' and began galloping forward on the back of his brass juggernaut.

He smelt the stench of mortals mixed with the odd metallic smell these Nova gave off. He assumed them to be hybrids of some sort. Meanwhile, the Tzeentch herald floated next to the furiously galloping Juggernaut at a leisurely hover, flames licking out from the back of the disk. The disk itself opened three eyes and stared at the juggernaut. The Brass beast responded by bucking its head back and trying to impale either the rider, the mount, or both. The flaming disk easily angled out of the way, the Tzeentch herald on top somehow managing to stand on top of the disk without even needing to shift its weight. It didn't even seem to notice that the disk was now at a 60 degree angle with the ground.

"_Da-_**DAMN** _Tze-_**TZEENTCHIANS." **The Skulltaker muttered, though with his daemonic voice, he may as well have said it out loud.

The Tzeentch herald ignored the statement entirely, still staring at that piece of the Nova it had picked up. There was no point in acknowledging the Khornate.

"_What are those things, a new class of Nova?_"

Both the mounted daemons picked up on the hushed whisper with keen senses and stopped.

They both looked left and right, scanning their surroundings with critical eyes. Their mounts picked up on their respective masters' behavior and also perked up. They assisted in the search for the hidden mortals, the juggernaut by sniffing the air, and the disk by using its multiple eyes to scan the area.

The Skulltaker was no fool.

He could tell by a glance. They were surrounded on all sides by mortals. They were compacted behind pillars, hidden behind closed doors, prone to the ground, and in all other manor of obscured places. The Tzeentch herald appeared to have picked up as well, because he was lightly muttering arcane chants under his breath. He faintly noticed the volts of blue electricity sparking across the tip of his staff, signifying he was preparing to cast a bolt of Tzeentch at whatever he chose for a target.

When you lived for countless millennia, and were older than even a couple gods, you recognized the signs of an ambush very quickly. The air felt different due to the breathing of many others, shadows were altered if any source of light showed on an object from a certain angle, and most of all, the heavy emotions of anxiousness, nervousness, and unsureness smothered the both of them like a blanket.

"_I-_**I** _Be-_**Beli**eve th_es_e ar**e** **th**e m_or_t**als **_you_ were **sent** for. _I will __**leave**__you_ **to it**." With that said, the Tzeentchian daemon hovered into the air, off to fulfill whatever objectives his master had set out.

Apparently that was enough to draw out their would-be ambushers. Without warning, dozens of human females jumped out of cover and toward the ascending Tzeentchian herald, with varying cries of 'don't let it escape'.

What followed was fairly predictable.

The herald turned and pointed his sparking staff at the closest female to leap at him. A pure bolt of blue lightning struck her dead center. She was completely obliterated as the bolt seared through her, as well as someone behind her. Following in quick succession, his three spare hands combusted into blue flames and hurled a fireball at the nearest target, each with pinpoint accuracy. The warpfire struck the attackers from the sky, burning them to ashes before they even reached the ground. Finally, the Tzeentch herald opened his beak, flames bubbling in the back of his throat. The few attackers that remained, finally got within striking range of the herald. They raised their weapons, not yet realizing their own demise.

A great gout of fire erupted from the Tzeentch heralds mouth, 'the breath of chaos' as it were called.

The women's clothes were left untouched. Their physical bodies however were completely burnt from existence. Of the 8 or so mortals that leapt to kill the Tzeentch herald, only articles of clothing and ashes came back down. The Skulltaker was disgusted by the cowardly use of magic, but he could still appreciate a decent slaughter, no matter the surrounding circumstances of it. The Tzeentch herald eventually disappeared from sight, elevating himself above the clouds for whatever reason.

The Skulltaker was perfectly alright with this. With the absence of the damnable Tzeentch scrall, he could now focus on the particular skill of his that had earned him his title.

Taking an excited glance around, the Skulltaker sized up his prey.

All of them were young, which in truth, he had little problem with. The females were all armed with a wide variety of weapons, most of which were bladed or for bludgeoning. Behind the females, were males with their arms outstretched. They were unarmed, but their posture made him think they were pyskers. However, they all clearly lacked a strong enough warp presence to be psykers, meaning whatever they planed to do, it wouldn't be magic. They all stared at him with an air of fear and curiosity. It was as if they were confused as to whether or not he was the enemy.

If they decided they were too hesitant to make the first move, he'd gladly take it.

He dismounted from his juggernaut, realizing that if they could casually jump as high as they did when attacking the Tzeetchian, then he'd be better off on foot. The juggernaut was ordered to wait for his command before he attacked, not a second sooner.

That taken care of, the daemon began lumbering toward the opposition with the intent to take the skulls of at least a few of them. The mortals in question, 'Pandora' as they were called, steeled themselves for battle against what they suspected to be a new type of Nova or some other extra-dimensional monster. If was unfortunate that they would never learn how accurate their initial assumptions had been.

"_Ye-_**YES!** _Sho-_**SHOW** _Me-_**ME** _Wh-_**WHAT** _Pa-_**PASSES** _Fo-_**FOR** _Fu-_**FURY** _Amo-_**AMONGST** _Yo-_**YOUR** _Ki-_**KIND!"**

At once, they all let lose a surprised gasp as he spoke, as if they didn't think he was capable of speech. The Skulltaker ignored it and phased forward, hellblade in hand.

The closest woman barely managed a squeak before he nearly chopped her head off with a horizontal stroke. She barely brought up a claymore sword to block. Despite that, she was sent flying backwards into her fellow comrades, who struggled to not get knocked off their feet trying to catch her. The daemon was several dozen times stronger than her, simply from that display alone.

The moment he made that movement, the other females counter-attacked. To the daemons surprise, many of them began speed boosting toward him in a similar manner to the 'phasing' ability all daemons, and by extension Khornate heralds, possessed. Khornates only used the ability to close in with the enemy for glorious close combat. These mortals were actually using it to try and scatter his senses, while attacking at his blind spots. Sadly for them, the Skulltaker would not be the undefeated duelist he was if simple speed could outdo him.

"_Ye-_**YES! **_Le-_**LET** _Th-_**THE **_Re-_**RED** _Ri-_**RIVER **_Fl-_**FLOW!"**

In a rush of motion, the Skulltaker swung his flaming hellblade in a large arc. Five of the Pandora couldn't stop their momentum, and ran clean into the strike. The others planted their feet and double accelerated backwards.

Three of them were bisected in a single slash, while two more managed to get their weapons up to block. Those two were sent tumbling backward in a heep. Two more Pandoras triple accelerated behind the daemon and swung at his back. The Skulltaker evaded by phasing forward while simultaneously making an underhand slash at one of his rear attackers. Being a daemon, he could see the souls and essence of mortals and immortals alike. Simple afterimages did little to fool him.

The woman screamed as one of her arms was sheared off in a visceral spray of blood. She fell to the ground, clutching her stump in agony. She never even saw the massive clawed foot stomping down on her head. The Pandora's head was squashed, as well as the concrete around her head shattered. The other Pandora leapt forward and quadruple accelerated at the daemon, appearing in four different directions at once. The Skulltaker simply sought out the only image with a soul, and thrusted his hellblade at the image. The woman's eyes widened in alarm and she brought up a ball and chain to defend herself. The hellblade cut through the simple chain, and went through her heart. The Khornate daemon didn't linger on the kill, swiping his blade through the dead Pandora's side to free it from the mortal's corpse.

The Skulltaker spun around to see an incoming group of attackers from above, all of them using their acceleration powers to make afterimages of themselves. The Skulltaker held his hellblade in front of his face and let it intercept the three attacks aimed at his head.

"What!?" One of the women cried out in shock, as if she was surprised that he was strong enough to block the three of them with only one arm.

The Skulltaker was easily 10 ft. tall, and by no extent considered lanky. Every limb was packed with muscle and unholy might. More than once, the Skulltaker had manhandled the walking battle tanks of men called space marines before cutting them apart with his hellblade. If he couldn't beat out three little girls in a test of strength with only one arm, then he would be ashamed of himself.

Another Pandora came at him from the side with a axe-staff. She glowed a strange blue aura as she swung, yelling furiously while she did so. The herald of Khorne saw the attack coming from a mile away. Using his free hand, he moved his armored forearm in the way of the attack. The brass metal plates were forged in the warp by daemonic black smiths, created in a fire of burning souls. It could stand-up to most anti-tank weapons, and outright ignored any small arms or non-power weapons.

The Axe-staff harmlessly pinged off the Skulltaker's forearm armor.

Pushing off the three blade-locked Pandora with ease, he turned to face the axe-staff wielder with furious glowing red eyes. She barely managed to get out a an undignified 'eep' before her head was loped off her shoulders in a clean sword stroke. The three women he had pushed away earlier had come charging at what they thought to be his unprotected side. The Skulltaker repressed a face-palm.

A Khornate herald never left an opening... or at least not an unintentional one.

The Skulltaker whipped around and lashed out with his clawed foot. The woman in the center of three Pandora was sent flying back when the front kick made contact with her chest. The other two leapt to the side and made swings at his sides. He blocked one stick with his forearm armor, and parried away the other strike with his hellblade. Turning on the Pandora who struck his forearm, the daemon made a powerful overhand swing. The hellblade glowed bright yellow with roaring fire, leaving an afterimage of flames when it moved. She feebly tried to block with her double sided axe.

The Pandora and here weapon were split into two.

The Pandora he parried with, swung her ball and chain at his lower back. Annoyed by the attack, he spun around and caught the annoying lead ball in his palm. The weapon's owner turned pale as a ghost when she saw the massive daemon looking down on her with a mix of condescending and fury. The Skulltaker yanked the chain forward, bringing the Pandora with it. With her weapon no longer in her control, she was defenseless as the daemon's hellblade swung toward her neck.

Her head rolled across the ground, at the feet of a group of terrified limiters.

The Skulltaker had almost forgotten about them. Curious how they were obviously physically superior to their female counterparts, yet they made no move to attack. He suspected that the female warriors, or 'Pandora' as they were called, were simply canon fodder and these were the true soldiers.

Then he remembered the visions Khorne had given him.

They were but scared weaklings. The only purpose they served was countering the null fields that the Nova created. Him being a chaos daemon, those null fields didn't work. His physical manifestation was still made entirely of warp energy. Because of that, he was only superficially bound to the laws of physics.

The Khornate herald calmly walked through the null fields the limiters casted at him, ignoring whatever effects they had on his physical manifestation. The limiters began fumbling backward in fright, seeing their abilities inexplicably fail to work.

Before they could blink, an abomination of machine and daemon, twice as large as a battle tank, came thundering toward them. It was easily twice the size of the sword wielding daemon they had previously been retreating from. To their dismay, the juggernaut of Khorne completely ignored their overlapping freezing zones as well, lowering its razor sharp horn/blade to attack. They tried to scatter and flee for their lives but it was fruitless. The Juggernaut was a daemon of mechanical muscle and daemonic viciousness. It ran each and every limiter down, stomping them into a red paste with their brass hooves or running them through with the man sized butcher's knife it called a horn.

The Skulltaker walked over and mounted his steed once more, trudging through the bloodstained ground. As he rode through the field of bodies, flaming black sword in one hand, chain reins of his mount in the other, he glowered in annoyance.

The Pandora were not worthy of being called soldiers. The limiters were absolutely pathetic. Even the human guardsmen were more competent than these sorry excuses for warriors. At least they could gather the courage to charge him and his daemons if they were in high enough numbers and one of their commissars were present.

Perhaps he was being preemptive in his judgment. There was a chance that maybe one of these 'Pandora' could impress him before having her skull ripped from her charred bones. The chances were definitely slim, but present none the less. As well, something else was bothering him.

Not that the Khorne herald particularly cared, but he was curious where that Tzeentch herald had gotten off to.

XxXxx

* * *

East Genetics

"Do _NO_t **fear**! _You_ **sha**ll _b_e the **first** I _ch_**ang**e from _life_ **TO** _d__**eat**__h_."

The Tzeentch herald cried out, its voice fluctuating between three different voices as it spoke.

Balls of warpfire, gusts of acidic smoke, and bolts of blue and pink electricity rained across the east genetics academy. People screamed in panic and fright as Pandora, Limiters, and staff alike were incinerated in colorful flames, dissolved into a screaming puddle by pink gas clouds, or charred into crisps by lightning.

The herald darted across the sky like a hawk, continuing its relentless assault on the school.

Attack helicopters came in to fire at the daemon, but he was having none of it. The disk banked downward, as a 90 degree angle to the ground. The helicopters fired their miniguns and anti-tank missiles at the disk as it went. The herald of Tzeentch brought up a mini void shield to intercept the ballistic weapons. The disk of Tzeentch defied gravity by making a perfect 'U' turn before it hit the ground and shooting toward the attack helicopters. Somehow, the herald of Tzeentch never once lost his footing while standing on the smooth and speeding disk. The Tzeentch herald began hurling fireball after fireball at the helicopters as it approached.

A single chopper was struck in its side by a ball of warpfire, blowing off its tail rotor. The chopper feebly spun around in circles, before it smashed into the side of a building and violently blew up. A sizable chunk of the building itself was damaged by the explosion. The herald fired a bolt of Tzeentch at another chopper. This one wasn't nearly as dramatic in its destruction as it simply blew apart into hundreds of flaming pieces.

The herald of Tzeentch madly cackled in delight as it changed buildings from pristine to damaged, vehicles from functional to charred scrap, and mortals from life to death.

More Pandora showed up, leaping toward the herald with the intent to kill. The daemon turned around upon hearing their raging battle cries. It laughed in 3 different voices at their feeble attempts.

The Pandora roared in righteous fury to kill the thing that had caused such destruction. They soared through the air with their stigmata enhanced bodies. Their volt weapons were poised to strike a death blow against this unworldly being that was reeking havoc upon their school. Their eyes could only widen in surprise as the creature _laughed_ at them, before opening its beak to reveal the raging inferno building in the back of its throat.

With a daemonic bellow, the Tzeentch herald bathed the Pandora in magically searing flames.

xxXxx

* * *

The Skulltaker assumed that the Tzeentch scrawl was probably off reading a book or something else that was equally pointless. Tossing that thought from his mind, he made his way to the nearest concentration of Pandora on this planet.

West Genetics.

The herald of Khorne had picked up certain tricks in its long existence. Daemons that escaped into the materium were technically only 'halfway' there. They manifested physical bodies, but their actual essence still resided in the warp. It was because of this that daemons seemed to phase in and out of reality. The Skulltaker had derived a handy trick from this state of being however. By willfully destabilizing its presence in reality, he could re-manifest himself where he so chose on the planet. Most daemons didn't do this because there was the very real chance the warp rift that sustained them would fluctuate while they were in this process, and cut them off before they could completely re-manifest. As such, daemons tended to simply appear where they could, and went the rest of the way by simply walking/slithering/flying to their next destination.

The Skulltaker, do to his special circumstance for being sent here, had no fear of that happening to him.

Both he and his mount began fade in and out of the material world. The juggernaut took off at full gallop while this happened, angered at being pulled out off reality without having first slain something. The Skulltaker gave up trying to placate his mount and simply held on for the ride. As they faded away the juggernaut resisted and flailed harder and harder. The two daemons completely exited reality, the brass armored juggernaut releasing an infuriated roar as they left.

The only evidence of their existence was the mutilated bodies of recently slain humans, along with a lingering echo of the Khornate juggernaut's roar.

xxXxx

* * *

West Genetics

"**ROOOOOOAAAAAR**_-AAAAR_**"**

The Skulltaker and his brass juggernaut tore into reality at the front gates of West genetics.

The Khornate herald immediately scanned his surroundings for signs of any enemies. He took passive notice of the massive walls in front of him, and incoming tram overhead. He could sense countless souls in the area, all of them going through the motions of preparing for combat.

If he had to haphazard a guess, he would assume that they were preparing to fight those machines he and the Tzeetchian herald had destroyed earlier, and were now preparing to fight him and the other daemon that had accompanied him. It wasn't necessarily pointless, but given what he had seen from these 'Pandora' so far

The juggernaut didn't immediately realize that it was back in the materium, as it continued to roar and charge forward. The Khornate herald on its shoulder encouraged the daemon in its angered frenzy as it charged forward at the front gate. The Skulltaker tightened his grip on the chains and flattened himself against the back of his mount.

Several thousand pounds of daemonic muscle and steel met the front doors of West Genetics academy, with a lot of momentum behind its charge.

xxXxx

* * *

"**ALERT TO ALL PANDORA! WE HAVE A HOSTILE FORCE ON THE PREMESISE! ALL SENIOR PANDORA ARE TO DEEPLOY IMMEDIATLEY. ALL THIRD YEARS ARE TO GO INTO RESERVE, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATLEY!**"

A pair of 4th year students leapt backward to avoid being crushed.

In front of them stood an angry red bull, adorned with chains, skulls, and other violent imagery. The very air it breathed out seethed with irrational loathing and hatred for those in front of it. Throwing it's head back and roaring, it thundered forward on powerful legs.

The Skulltaker leered down at the humans with contempt and anger.

"What is that thing!? It can't be a Nova can it?!" One of the limiters cried out, his voice tinged with fear.

Panic went up in their ranks as they beheld the daemon and its mount. It was covered in gruesome imagery that placed fear into the hearts of the young children. The blood splatters that adorned the extra-dimensional monsters matched their armor and skin so well that the students didn't know whether or not they had actually painted themselves with human blood, and splatters were the parts that hadn't dried yet.

One of the more strong willed Pandora shoved her way past her frightened comrade, starring into the Skulltaker's own baleful yellow eyes. With no clear retina to discern in the daemon's gaze, she felt as if she were looking into the eyes of creature with no soul. She would never realize just how spot-on her assumption was.

"Perhaps that is what Nova really look like beneath all that armor. Either way, that thing clearly isn't here for any good. The very sword it's carrying has specs of stigmata on it! Let's take it down!"

_What? _The Skulltaker blinked and took a good look at his blade.

Sure enough, there actually _were_ specs of some sort of bloodstained alien metal lying on his sword. The Skulltaker had gotten so into the slaughter that he hardly noticed. The daemon quickly concluded that these bits of 'stigmata' as they were referred to, must've been in the bodies of the Pandora he had slain earlier. He saw similar pieces in the bodies of the warrior women facing him, all of them at their backs. Thinking back, he_ had_ impaled quite a few of the wenches upon his blade. He guessed it wasn't all that odd that a few specs lingered on his hellblade.

Channeling some of his essence through his sword, the hellblade spontaneously combusted into a violent yellow fire. Warpfire flayed away all the specs of blood, flesh, and even the stigmata pieces on his sword, cleansing it as clean as the day it was forged. If Khornate daemons didn't use this trick immediately after receiving their hellblades, the swords would be so slick with blood and flesh pieces that the sword would probably slide off of everything it tried to cut.

At once, the women all materialized their volt weapons. The Limiters simultaneously initiated an 'erinbar set' with their Pandora partners and casted a freezing on the monstrous beast. The second the overlapping Freezing fields hit the Skulltaker and his mount, the 4th year students double accelerated toward the beast with the intent to kill.

The Skulltaker laughed at their attempt to rush him.

He had faced the Space marines. Super human warriors in impenetrable power armor. Fast enough to dodge bullets with ease, strong enough to punch holes in tanks, and utterly fearless to even the most insane odds. Their skulls alone made up over 60% percent of the skulls on his personal cloak. He had faced soulless Tyranids. Bio-engineered creatures who could mold themselves into whatever form that fit their combative needs. He had faced Eldar. The second most eldest mortal race in history, and most psychically potent, agile, and hyper sensitive enemy he had ever fought. Their skulls were also hard to get a hold of, due to how often they fled from glorious combat in their cowardly ways.

In comparison to these enemies, children with swords simply couldn't compare.

The Skulltaker thundered forward on his mount, completely ignoring the freezing field with his daemonic aura.

The juggernaut of Khorne was a slow creature. It was meant to endure a withering hail of attacks and press on into the throng of enemy forces. It was so large that their riders could easily lay flat and use the bulk of its mount as cover. It was built for endurance and power, not speed and precision.

Despite this, the mount proved its worth.

The Skulltaker was a whirlwind of destruction on top of his mount. Any Pandora that came at him, no matter the angle or power behind their attack, found themselves disemboweled or headless. The daemon was not only strong and practiced, but precise and calculating. Every sword stroke he made claimed a life, or opened up the target for an attack that would claim a life. Some Pandora opted for less dangerous tactic, and tried to immobilize him by killing his mount. The Juggernaut of Khorne was powerful enough to endure weapons that would fell a battle tank. The Pandora's weapons glanced off the daemon mount's bloodstained armor plating. The Juggernaut retaliated by bucking and charging toward any enemy that got close. To it's ire, it found it's enemies a little too speedy to land a direct hit. This only made it more angry, and lash out even more brutally.

When the Skulltaker fought enemies like the Eldar, the Slaaneshi daemons of the whoreish chaos god, or the more heightened of space marines, he had learned that no swing could be spared. Every attack had to be a set up or a death blow. The Skulltaker knew his current enemies favored hit and run tactics, rarely dedicating themselves to an all out attack on his person. Even the ones wielding weapons like heavy maces and spike studded bats would only swing once at him, and try to disengage.

The Skulltaker knew that trying to block every attack would be foolish, as if he tried, he wouldn't be able to make any counter attacks in between the interval of two attacks. So instead, he projected a course for where every attack would land, and depending on whether or not it would find his flesh or armor, he would let it make contact. His armor was every bit as tough as the armor on his mount, but it was so sparse that he couldn't rely on it to protect him from all angles. Coupled with the weak force behind each blow, and it was almost laughable at how little damage the attacks that made contact were.

The Skulltaker never tired as it lashed out, sending female child warriors flying back into their classmates with entire limbs missing. His sword arm was the cause of most of those death's but not all of them. A good warrior never limited himself or herself to a single means of attack. Their would inevitably be moments in battle where a blade would be either too unwieldy to adjust to a given situation, and leave the owner vulnerable for precious moments. In these moments, the Skulltaker used his legs to kick. His powerful legs and sharp talons sent many Pandoras backward with their chests caved in. When his legs weren't optimal for the direction of the threat, he used his other arm to briefly release the chains that helped him balance on his raging mount and deliver a wall shattering punch. When he was too off-balance to risk releasing his chains or lifting his legs, he reared his massive horned head forward and into enemies aiming for his decapitation.

A Khornate herald doesn't reap as many kills as he does, claim the skulls of as many legendary warriors as he does, without learning a few unconventional methods of attack.

The Pandora were hurled back time and again, losing more of their number with each rushing attempt they made on the daemonic pair. By now, entire classrooms worth of fallen classmates littered the ground around the Skulltaker and his mount, many of them separated from their heads. The furious juggernaut refused to see living enemies escape it's wrath, and charged back into the fray, bringing his rider along for the trip. The Pandora counter charged, be it out off courage, desperation, or stupidity. The Juggernaut stomped on many of the littered bodies along the way, some of them still barely hanging onto life. Those that were caught under the steel feet of the Juggernaut were pulped into a gooey mess that were unfit to be referred to as 'remains'.

The Pandora renewed their assault, making use of every trick they could.

They made copies of themselves to confuse daemon, hyper accelerated to out speed the monster, and even entered Pandora mode, but nothing would work. The daemon was able to see their very souls, and was unperturbed by the numerous copies in his field of vision, as he could easily identify the real ones. The Pandora's speed was a non-factor, as he had faced enemies much quicker and stronger than they were. He need not be as fast as them, only know where they'd try to strike. The strange armor they wore was a massive strength boost that he actually put a fair bit of effort into blocking, but it slowed them down and did little to protect them from his hellblade. That combination only saw them decapitated before they could even get off a swing.

By now, many of the limiters and their Pandora allies were breaking. The males could _feel_ their female partners being hacked apart, decapitated, and battered, if only barely. It was a terrifying experience to see their allies, future wives even, torn apart as casually they were. They eventually fled from combat, not that they were doing anything particularly important to begin with. The Limiters that still had remaining partners urged their partners to flee with them or went as far as abandoning them to their fate.

The Skulltaker was not amused by the act of cowardice, and thus ordered his juggernaut to charge past the evading Pandoras, and head straight for the fleeing males.

The Khornate herald could easily continue his fight with the Pandora. In fact, it was even easier now that his mount was moving in a predictable pattern rather than violently flailing about. He had better balance, and by extension, became a more coordinated killer. The Pandora's remaining boosted forward to either attack him, protect the Limiters, or take off with their own partners. The first two were easily repelled or cut apart. The later were simply cowards fleeing from combat.

Finally realizing their disadvantage, the Pandora set out to speed boosting away as many limiters as they could get their hands on. If they couldn't fight this monstrosity, they could at least avoid it. Sadly, the juggernaut's long strides and tireless pace saw it bearing down on the screaming Limiters.

It began madly swinging its horned head into the crowd of screaming teenagers, its bladed horn slicing through them like a horizontal pendulum. The Skulltaker leaned over the side of his mount and began reaping the heads of screaming Limiters as they ran, decapitating them in a similar manner to how farmers reaped wheat. Pandora leapt at him to defend the helpless limiters, but found themselves helpless to the might of the daemon herald. Single sword strokes saw them split in half.

Out of nowhere, a strange figure wearing metallic wings slammed into the front of the Skulltaker's juggernaut.

More surprisingly, it actually made a Khornate Juggernaut, charging at full tilt, come to a complete halt. The Skulltaker felt himself suddenly lurch forward and fly off his own mount. His body was still going the speed of his mount, even though the mount itself had stopped going forward. The daemon managed to angle itself so that it landed on its feet when it hit the ground, as apposed to taking a head-first dive into the dirt.

The Daemon completely ignored the Limiters running around him, his evil yellow eyes set firmly on the target in front of him.

The Juggernaut of Khorne was repeatedly being struck in the face by what the Skulltaker would compare to a power fist. There was a tiny and petite woman with a pair of gauntlets repeatedly hammering into his juggernaut mount. Seeing as his mount had taken blows from power fists being wielded by space marine terminators, it wasn't under threat of being beaten to death, but it's head _was_ snapping backward with every punch. The Juggernaut roared in fury, and reared back to try and stomp on the Pandora, only to find her launching a punch into it's lower legs.

Juggernauts were very front heavy beast. This was meant to help their momentum and make their impact all the more powerful. Their center of gravity was located in between their shoulders, where nearly all four legged beast had their center of gravity in their mid-section. As such, it was no surprise when the daemon mount actually felt its hind legs getting punched out from under it. The woman teleported from under the beast directly after the blow. The juggernaut fell flat on it's stomach, feeling so much rage that fire was beginning to bubble in the back of it's throat.

The Skulltaker snarled in fury at the assault, but also felt a ting of excitement.

The Skulltaker took this moment to imprint the memory of this woman's face into his mind, just before he scorched the flesh and blood from her bones. She was a human woman with a short hair cut and a pair of gauntlets. In addition, she had a pair of glowing synthetic wings. Most interestingly however was the fact that the woman was staring at the daemon with eyes that spoke of cold fury and promises of suffering.

The Skulltaker relished in her gaze, rather than wilt under it like most would. The Skulltaker was a herald to Khorne, a being who was always in a different stage of anger. Nothing can truly pacify his ire, and this trait extended to all his daemons. Just as well, Daemons of chaos very much enjoyed inspiring the emotions of which they were based on. The Skulltaker was no different.

Compared to all the weakling Pandoras and Limiters that fled from his presence in fear and despair, this single infuriated woman was like a beacon to him.

The Skulltaker watched as the woman used her wings to fly into the sky, well above the reach of the raging juggernaut that sought to impale and crush her. The juggernaut charged straight into the space that the flying Pandora had once occupied, leaving a crater in the ground he impacted. The daemon of flesh and steel roared in fury as its target escaped its reach, its eyes glowing a baleful red color.

The Pandora responded by opening fire upon the Juggernaut.

Lances of bright yellow energy smashed against the Juggernaut's armor, actually leaving scorch marks and dents across its blond plating. The ground exploded violently as the Pandora poured fire into the daemonic mount. The Juggernaut of Khorne bellowed in pain as a few of the lances actually managed to get past its armor and hurt it.

The Skulltaker wasted no time, and hurled his hellblade at the Pandora with as much power as he could manage, while still being accurate. The Pandora was forced to halt her on-slot and cover herself up with her power fists as she saw the hellblade hurdling toward her. A foolish mistake. The hellblade was a sword forged from the very depths of the warp itself. It's blade burned to the very touch, and-

The daemon's thoughts were cut short when the hell blade passed _through_ the Pandora, and the woman herself seemed to fade away into near non-existence!

The Skulltaker quickly destabilized his body and phased forward, just barely evading the trio of energy beams to slam into his position. The daemon snarled at the cowardly trick and quickly retrieved his sword from the ground. The moment he got the blade firmly in hand, he spun around to block a double hammer fist from the flying Pandora. The ground shattered beneath their feet under the stress, but the Skulltaker was unperturbed. Using his unholy might, he pushed the frail little girl away. Super powers or no, he was still an immortal, multi-millennium old, daemon, while his opponent was but a simple child. No amount of power would offset the raw ability difference between the two.

The Pandora slid back, balancing herself on her feet while glaring at the daemon with anger and frustration. Apparently she didn't realize he'd be as tough as he was, but still figured she had a chance to win. The Skulltaker admired such courage and self-confidence, but he'd destroy her all the same.

*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM*

Both combatants looked to the source of the noise and were both treated to a sight that would emotionally scar a lesser being.

The Skulltaker's juggernaut was thundering forward in a murderous rage, its armor clearly damaged and penetrated in several places. The mount of Khorne was roaring in a primal fury that struck fear into the hearts of all listeners. The beast was not only furious, but on a rampage. And it's sole source of rage was a cut little girl with wings.

"_Rrrr-_**ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAR!"**

The Pandora turned to fire another volley of lasers at the creature of pure evil, but suddenly found the herald of Khorne directly in her face. She nearly released a squeak of surprise, wondering how the creature before her had moved so fast.

She brought her arms up to block the barrage of sword blows the Skulltaker sent against her. She swung a claw at the daemon's hip, but the daemon countered with an underhand sword stroke to her palm, knocking the attack away. The daemon counter-attacked with a swift kick to the chest, which sent her skidding back a few feet. The Skulltaker took a single step forward and made a powerful overhead sword stroke. Chiffon Fairchild could only block by covering herself with both hands. The hellblade light on fire, glowing a bright yellow at edges and showing khornate runes in the center.

She was smashed into the ground by the power of the blow.

Suddenly, the Skulltaker phased off to the side. She was briefly confused until she saw the daemon's pet monster bearing down on her, roaring with such fury that its eyes and breath both released flames. The Juggernaut attempted to headbutt the frail Pandora, being sure to use cleaver-like blade it called a horn. Suddenly the woman disappeared from beneath the raging juggernaut, just before its horn impacted with her chest.

The Juggernaut raised its head and bellowed in ire, looking for where its prey had fled.

The Skulltaker moved from his previous position to avoid even more energy beams as they streaked toward him. The herald of khorne was getting annoyed now. As long as she had those wings, there was nothing to stop her from simply staying up there and firing at the two of them. He could try throwing his sword again, but even as skilled as he was, he didn't like his chances of fighting the Pandora barehanded. So the daemon was forced to phase and dodge back and forth, evading all the impacting energy beams, even deflecting a few with his hellblade. His juggernaut simply paced back and forth, watching her with hateful eyes. It was clear that the woman saw the Skulltaker as the real threat, not the beast, and was delegating all her attention to him. Then something odd happened.

A streak of pink lightning barely missed her, instead blowing a hole into the side of a genetics building.

The Skulltaker frowned, already knowing whose work this was. The only thing that could've been was warp lightning, and only the favored followers and daemons of Tzeentch could use it. Since the Skulltaker knew for certain that no new daemons had appeared in this world, there was only a single being it could've been.

The Tzeetchian herald.

"_**Do**_ _my_ **eyes** de_ciev_e me? _Do yo_**u falte**r in the** face o**f a _**mortal**_ _child_?"

Hovering overhead, standing on a flaming disk with eyes, was the 4 armed mutant that was a Tzeentch herald. A spell book in one hand, a staff in one hand, a ball of warp fire building in one hand, and a lightening dancing across the fingers of the last hand. The Skulltaker glared at the lesser herald, daring it to further irritate him.

Before either of the daemons could speak any further, a barrage of energy beams started to saturate the area. Dozens of beams came for the Skulltaker, causing the daemon to continue dodging and blocking with his sword at near imperceptible speeds. The Tzeentchian simply waved its staff in front of him, creating a miniature void shield. The lances of energy dissipated calmly as they hit the shield, leaving the Herald of Tzeentch unscathed.

Chiffon was getting desperate. She had expended too much energy fighting the red devil-looking daemon. Now there were two of them, and the second one seemed to specialize at range and defense. It was the polar opposite to the creature who she had just been fighting, who relished so much in close combat that the closest he had to a ranged attack was throwing his sword. If they both attacked her at once, she would die for certain.

So she didn't allow them the chance.

Unleashing her stigmata to their fullest extent, she flew toward the daemon on the burning disk at top speed, hoping that it was a lot less skilled in combat than its larger and muscular counterpart. The herald, despite having a beak of all things for a mouth, somehow managed to make a devious smile. The Herald reared back its head, flames of the warp building in the back of its throat. The breath of chaos changed forms at random, becoming that of an acidic smog, a spew of poisonous liquid, or alternatively a raging fire, all depending on how the daemon felt upon the moment they casted it.

Chiffon's eyes widened and she instinctively banked right.

She was lucky, as a gout of unnatural flames erupted from the daemons throat, which would've assuredly ensnared her had she maintained her coarse. The daemon seemed to notice that its attack had missed, and turned its head to face her, maintaining its gout of flame. She flew backward, quickly getting out of range of the attack, but sending more of her own beams to keep him from going on the offensive. The Herald hastily raised its void shield again, grunting in annoyance that such a young and inexperienced mortal was giving it such trouble.

The moment the beams relented, the Herald unleashed a barrage of attacks on the fledgling. Flaming balls of blue fire, bolts of colorful lightening, and another gout blood red flames were hurled at the woman. She responded to this on-slot by using her illusion turn, disappearing under the magical barrage being directed to her.

She reappeared behind the Skulltaker.

Four energy beams lanced out at once, but the Skulltaker was already moving. Daemons couldn't truly be taken by surprise, as they were always aware of their surroundings. If they didn't move to intercept in time, than it was simply because they had a lagging reaction, which the herald of Khorne had no such thing to worry about.

He phased out of the way of the attack and to the side, his blade arcing for her throat.

She blocked with her gauntlet, but the Skulltaker didn't stop there. He punched at her gut with his free hand. She barely managed to stop the blow, if only barely, with her own free hand. The Skulltaker didn't stop there either. He grabbed the Pandora's gauntleted arm and yanked forward, driving his knee into her gut.

Chiffon's eyes bulged as she felt her ribs shatter from the attack.

The Skulltaker released her wrist in favor of grabbing her throat and lifted her off the ground. Without hesitation, he immediately slammed her into the dirt as hard as he possibly could. Finally, made a single sword stroke, removing her legs from her body. The Skulltaker ignored the piercing shriek she released, to deep into his hateful assault to halt now. He would enjoy ending this one as much as he could. She had wounded his mount, and evaded his blade, not truly by skill, but by flying into the sky and attacking from out of reach. It was cowardly on too many levels to list. He assumed that she had thought to blast him at a distance that she figured he couldn't dodge at. That mistake would cost her everything.

The Skulltaker cut through her arms at the shoulders, leaving her as a limbless torso.

Yet despite all that, she was still conscious. She was bearing through the intense pain like no other. He had only seen this behavior in that of space marines, and perhaps few of the more zealous of imperial commissars. She was either no stranger to having limbs removed, or she had a grim fortitude about her on level with that of the super soldiers he had come to respect. He simply went with the later, and assumed she had lost limbs before.

The Skulltaker grabbed the woman by her hair, lifting her into the sky, uttering the 8-words of sacrifice.

The woman's body violently combusted, causing her to scream in pain. The fire quickly began to burn away her flesh, muscles, and blood, in seconds, ending her screams almost immediately. All that remained of her was a burning skeleton.

A quick flick of the wrist and the Skulltaker was holding nothing but her skull, having broken off the rest of the unnecessary bones.

Her skull belonged to Khorne now.


End file.
